Could ‘micro-homes’ offer housing solution?

Shipping containers have long been a sturdy mainstay of global maritime trade.
In the city of Brighton, on the southern English coast, the durable metal boxes now also provide an low-cost housing option.

In early December Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) and property developer, QED, opened 36 shipping containers retrofitted with kitchens, bathrooms and insulated plaster-board walls.

The units have been erected on spare land in the city and will be used to house local homeless people, the number of which has been increasing steadily in recent years, according to BHT chief executive, Andy Winter.

“There’s a chronic shortage of affordable housing in Brighton,” Winter told CNN. “I was initially very skeptical about housing people in metal boxes … but the containers have been converted to an extremely high standard.”

Temporary accommodation like this “could really make a difference in the short term,” he added.

While the concept of transforming shipping containers into housing units has been experimented with before — including in Amsterdam, where containers are used to house students, and London, where they offer a quirky waterside abode beside the Thames — Winter believes the idea, or similar iterations of the concept, could offer a timely solution to urban housing challenges the world over.

Low supply, lack of available land as well as stringent planning laws have seen rents and property prices soar in many major cities in recent years. Houses prices in London increased by 10% in a single month in October, according to property experts, Rightmove.

Via architecture lab online magazine

Fuente Original 

http://architecturelab.net/2014/01/micro-homes-offer-housing-solution

 

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