The challenge of Prefab 2020? Create a sensation – something more than just a working space to live. Ideas that will inspire others, to be planted within the dizzyingly dense cores of the major city centers. Use design to show the incredible potential of prefabricated, modular and small-space apartments, condos and other housing types. The result? A series of fun, functional and futuristic dwelling designs from stackable bubble homes to fold-out, house-in-the-box architecture.
Think about it for a moment: how much of your interior living space is actually in continuous use, or even used most of the time? When we are eating we need a dining room table and chairs, cooking requires appliances and work surfaces, for sleeping we depend on a comfortable bed – but rarely do all of these activities overlap. This is the basis of the winning submission shown above, Ecomobi by Mobius, perhaps the ultimate convertible apartment or condo space.
What use is the space over the streets we already occupy on either side? We construct sky-high structures all over the grid in places like Manhattan, but rarely does anyone consider the rather obvious possibility of lofting living spaces over the roadways that define these grids. Honorable mention recipient Jason David proposes we re-purpose these missed opportunities with stunning single-family homes.
Worried about the visual noise that will accompany overcrowding? This camouflage house idea (from Alyssa Schwann & Sean Pearson, project pictured in the first images above) is an almost tongue-and-cheek response to potential suburban critics who want their urban proximity but their green lawns and trimmed hedges too.
If we run out of land (or the tides keep rising), there is always the other 70% of the world. This design suggests a series of simple, small, prefabricated homes that can rest in low-level bodies of water or drift gently on the waves.
Bringing the competition full square (or square, or rectangle as the case may be), this modest untitled entry is a good deal like the winning one – a relatively minimalist (downright high-modernist) grid home that slides open and shut depending on occupancy, making it more easily mobile but also able to conserve space and create more open exterior patio or porch area around it when not occupied.
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