Lives of Consequence
Jennifer Siegal '87
Designer
Using Los Angeles as her laboratory, founder and principal designer of the Los Angeles-based firm Office of Mobile Design (OMD) Jennifer Siegal '87 has been melding art, technology, psychology, sociology and science for the past 12 years to create the prefab home of the 21st century - an eco-friendly structure that is responsible, sustainable and precision built.
Influenced by her upbringing in small-town New Hampshire and her undergraduate years in Geneva, NY, Siegal is committed to eco-friendly design and the green movement. Her dedication is reflected in the design and execution of her pre-fab homes, which are more cost effective than building on-site and, since they can be constructed in half the time, mean less stress on the environment. Furthermore, her homes are ideally suited to the California landscape where her business is based, because they are built with sturdier frames that are, therefore, better able to withstand earthquakes.
Siegal is not only redefining popular notions of building; she is also helping to spread the message of eco-friendly design through schools she has designed and built. The Mobile EcoLab is a prefab school used to teach students about the environment and even the school's origins support this mission. Built in collaboration with the Hollywood Beautification Team, a grassroots group founded with the mission to restore beauty and integrity to the Hollywood community, the design and construction work was based around a donated cargo truck trailer and cast-offs from film sets. She also built the Portable Construction Training Center (PCTC) for the Venice Community Housing Corporation, a non-profit organization founded with the mission to develop and maintain affordable housing for disadvantaged and low-income individuals. The 14' x 65' PCTC is a hands-on classroom used by student trainees to learn and apply construction skills to needed projects. The PCTC allows space for the four basic construction trades: plumbing, painting and plaster, carpentry, and electrical.
Siegal's work has been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum's 2003 National Design Triennial; the Walker Art Center's Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life; the 2006 NY Mobile Living Exhibition; and the National Building Museum's The Green House, New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design in 2006 and Reinventing the Globe: A Shakespearean Theater for the 21st Century in 2007.
Her eco-friendly designs have received numerous awards and produced dozens of homes and schools. Receiving her master's degree from Southern California institute of Architecture, she earned their Distinguished Alumna Award in 2009. She was recently honored with USA Network's "Character Approved" award in 2009 and the History Channel's 2005 Infiniti Design Excellence Award for her competition entry for the Los Angeles City of the Future 2106. In 2003, she spent a year as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her work has been televised on CNN, HGTV, broadcast on NPR 'My Fellow Americans,' widely published in more than 100 books, newspapers and journals from Architectural Record, Domus, Dwell, Elle Décor, ID, LA Times, Metropolitan Home, Newsweek, New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Time, Vanity Fair, Wired, Wall Street Journal, and Wallpaper.