This Three-Story Tiny House Fits In The Footprint Of A Parking Space

FastCompany.com ^ | 10/23/2017 | Adele Peters

[simpson96]

In Helsinki, like many cities, there isn’t enough housing to keep up with demand. Some people blame a lack of land to build new housing, but one design firm argues that there is enough land–if you know where to look. The firm’s new building is designed to fit in a single parking spot.

“The city is not designed because of humans–it’s designed because of cars,” says architect Marco Casagrande, principal at the Helsinki-based Casagrande Laboratory, which designed the new tiny house. “All the streets in cityscapes are based on car dimensions. This I found a little bit strange. We have all this talk about the density of cars getting less and less in cities, and at the same time, we are talking about people moving into cities . . . but we don’t have space to build. Nobody has been questioning car parking spaces. They are everywhere. So this talk about no land to build in cities is nonsense: It’s everywhere, but it’s just for cars.”(snip)

The first prototype doesn’t have space for a kitchen or running water, based on the reasoning that someone living in the middle of an urban neighborhood could get food elsewhere and shower at a gym (it does have a composting toilet). It runs on its own solar panels, and the wood material is self-insulating and warm in winter, so it doesn’t need to be hooked up to the grid. But the architects are now working on designs that can also be connected to water and work more like conventional housing.(snip)

The architects are already getting orders to produce the houses, which cost around $40,000 for three stories. “It’s like [the price of] your average car,” he says.

[kitchen]

Around $250k.

[Political Junkie Too]

-PJ

[freepertoo]

Sigh. I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a long way from Texas, but thanks!