Sydney architect debuts flat-pack homes
The future of affordable housing may come packed in a box, if one Sydney architect has his way.
Architect Alex Symes, founder of Big World Homes, has developed a flat-pack home he says will help alleviate housing shortage and affordability issues, the ABC has reported. Symes described the one bedroom, 13.75 square-metre DIY home as “IKEA on steroids”.
According to the ABC, the home comes on the back of a trailer and is made up of 37 panels. Buyers can construct the home using only a drill, a hammer and a wrench.
"It has all its water tanks; we have two potable water tanks, we've got one grey water tank, so all the waste water effectively comes to the grey water tank, you add an additive to it and then effectively that's safe to go on your garden,” Symes told the ABC.
"We've got the gas cylinders for cooking and also for hot water heating, [and] we've got batteries at the back — they're linked to the solar PV and that's effectively what runs all your lights."
The home costs $65,000, which includes the trailer it sits on, all the off-grid energy accessories and white goods, the ABC reported. Architect Tim Horton told the ABC the homes just required land on which to build.
"We actually need to be able to curate land, big blocks of land, say brownfield sites or other pieces of open land in which we can host these big world communities," Horton said.
Horton suggested people could live in the “pop-up communities” if they wanted to spend time saving for a deposit of “have a more flexible approach to their housing lifestyle”.
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