In 1997, Jay Shafer built a tiny house on wheels that shunned trailer
park conventions and attempted to mimic a classic 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 began designing and building small
homes for others he named his company Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.
Appearing on major TV shows and in most magazines, he became the poster
boy for the Small House Movement.
In 2012, he split with his
Tumbleweed company and founded Four Lights Tiny House Company to focus
more on design and on his plans for a tiny house village. His new homes
are what he calls "unitized"; they can be more tailored to an
individual's needs. "It's kind of like LEGO meets IKEA and they make a
porn movie together". Houses can be ordered with kitchens, bathrooms and
bedrooms moved about as you choose and with optional loft or bumpouts
for an extra bed or office space.
He hopes his tiny house village
- still in the planning phase - will offer people a way around building
codes. He hopes it will be mostly his designs, but is open to anyone
who wants to bring a well-designed tiny house (homes, not RVs) to his
planned community based in Sonoma, California. He forgets and refers to
it as a trailer park, but he says it's really a "village of tiny
houses". The working title is "Napoleon Complex" with the byline
"cohousing for the antisocial".
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