When asked to comment on the Rice School of Architecture, Onezieme Mouton ’01 (M.A.) gives the program a simple but ringing endorsement: “It changed my life.”

• Not that Mouton’s (better known to his friends as One, pronounced Oh-Nee) pre-Rice life was anything shabby. He grew up in the charming French-style fishing town of Abbeville, Louisiana. His father was in construction, so he came to the Rice master of architecture program already possessing strong building skills. The Rice program is so flexible that he was able to forego the building-oriented classes and concentrate on design, especially computer-based design.

• After earning his B.F.A. in sculpture from Louisiana State University, Mouton set off for Arles, France, where he studied photography and eventually joined a French acting troupe. In Arles, he lived among gypsies and Algerian immigrants. The portable and flexible nature of his neighbors’ dwellings made a lasting impression on the adventurous young man. His thesis project at Rice was a modular, portable house that can be assembled and disassembled by two people, transported in an ordinary pickup, and situated on any concrete slab. Perfect for gypsies.

• Mouton currently works as an associate for Natalye Appel’s small and well-regarded Houston architecture firm, where he has designed some single-family houses. But his heart is really in high-quality, mass-produced items, such as what he hopes his modular house will become after he’s ironed out a few kinks. A Chinese friend told him he could sell his modular houses in China in vast quantities.

• “I take an industrial design approach to architecture,” he says. “It’s non-elitist. I want to get the highest quality design to the largest number of people.”

• Mouton also has designed furniture. He has a patent on a counter-balanced table design and is working on creating striking-looking chairs that can be easily taken apart and reassembled.

• For the time being, working in Houston suits his purposes. He likes the way Appel “runs her practice like a studio,” and Houston is a good place “to get things made.” But the day may come when marketing his products will take him to the East or West Coast.

• In any case, he’ll never forget his days at Rice, and he has high regard for the faculty. “Albert Pope is an excellent, very analytical critic.” Even more important, he says, “The other students are a big influence.” He speaks almost in awe of a studio collaboration between Brian Heiss and Michael Morrow, in which they made a movie about a building, designed a theater in which to watch the movie, and provided popcorn. And he notes that without the metalworking lab provided by students Joe Meppelink and David Sisson in which he constructed his modular house, “I could never have done my thesis.”

• There is a certain wry understatement in Mouton’s voice when he says, “I’m kind of proud to have my master’s from Rice.”