In 1997, Jay Shafer constructed a tiny house on wheels that shunned trailer park conventions and tried to imitate a traditional gabled home. This act of design rebellion- coupled with Shafer’s challenge to building codes (first in Iowa City and later in California) and his co-founding of the Small House Society- helped launch a movement.
He named his first tiny house “Tumbleweed” and when he started designing and constructing small homes for others he named his agency Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Appearing on major TV shows and in most magazines, he grew to become the poster boy for the Small House Movement.
In 2012, he split with his Tumbleweed business enterprise and founded Four Lights Tiny House Company to focus even more on design and on his plans for a tiny house village. His new homes are what he calls “unitized”; they are often even more tailor-made to a personal’s wants. “It’s sort of like LEGO meets IKEA and so they make a porn film together”. Houses may be ordered with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms moved about as you choose and with optional loft or bumpouts for an additional bed or office space.
He hopes his tiny house village – still within the planning stage – will present folks a method around building codes. He hopes it will be largely his designs, but also is open to any individual who desires to bring a well-designed tiny house (homes, not RVs) to his planned neighborhood structured in Sonoma, California. He forgets and refers to it as a trailer park, but also he says it is actually a “village of tiny houses”. The working title is “Napoleon Complex” with the byline “cohousing for the antisocial”.
Four Lights Tiny House Company http://www.fourlightshouses.com/
Tiny house village: http://www.fourlightshouses.com/pages/the-napoleon-complex
Related movies:
— Our tour of Shafer’s authentic 89-square-foot home http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/a-tiny-home-tour-living-in-96-square-feet/
— Shafer moves into his 120-square-foot modular home/workplace http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/tiny-open-house-one-worlds-smallest-homes-for-sale/
— Teen tiny home builder Austin Hay constructed Shafer’s design, the “Fencl” http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/teen-tiny-house-builder-austin-hay-finishes-dorm-on-wheels/
— Our documentary on tiny homes that includes Shafer: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/we-tiny-house-people-documentary/
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