When there’s little land to build houses on, there’s no other way but up – engineers go vertical construction. This is what a Harvard engineer has pondered on and went on to conceptualize stackable homes.
Jeff Wilson, who was formerly the dean of Huston-Tillotson University in Texas, lived in a dumpster for a year. Coming from this experience he realized that “tiny living”, or a minimalist lifestyle, is the way to go.
Source: Sarah Natsumi via Business Insider
“While the experiment was extreme, the experience I gained by living small and simple made a big impression,” he said. “At the end of the year, I left the dumpster with the concept for a new category of housing — a beautiful, small footprint home designed as a solution for the growing housing crisis.”
His concept of stackable houses were materialized through a housing startup called Kasita, which was founded in 2015. It got its name from the word “casita”, which is the Spanish for “little house”.
Source: Kasita
The company offers a 352-square foot of housing units, able to be used individually or stacked for occupancy of multiple families. For comparison, the average one-car garage measures about 260 square feet.
Each Kasita unit, which costs $139,000, is minimalistic in nature as seen from the rendered photos below. The actual unit is unfurnished, by the way, but is complete with the basic home divisions. If you don’t mind the open-layout space that doubles as a living room and bedroom, then this is the home for you.
Source: Kasita
It is pre-fabricated, taking weeks to construct and only a day to install. The home can be assembled off-site and delivered in two to three weeks, the former postdoctoral researcher at Harvard and IBM project manager shared.
“The way we build housing (and even skyscrapers) hasn’t changed substantially in over 100 years and a lot of that lag is because we haven’t updated the way we approach building,” he added.
“A house is built once and it’s only improvement will be a marble countertop replacement in 30 years. A Kasita product can iterate version upon version and improve based on user experience.”
Now the company is waiting for preorders. The first Kasita unit will be delivered in June of 2017.
Source: Business Insider
