Vertical Urban Campground
The A-Kamp47 project by Malka Architecture gives the homeless a safe place to sleep in the form of 23 parasitic tent pods stacked vertically against a public wall. The project provided 47 people with shelter in Marseille, France, relying on a local law stating that no one can be evicted from housing during the winter.
Foldable Pop-Up Homes
Minimalist, foldable pop-up homes could offer basic temporary shelter in transitional places like vacant lots. The PopUp Home by Studio D3R in Germany even includes built-in furniture, and the origami shelter by Doowon Suh is made to be stacked and shipped for deployment after emergencies.
Illegal Rooftop Structures in China
If you’re rich enough to build your dream estate, but don’t want to leave the city, you can have your cake and eat it too – as long as you’re willing to carry out the whole process illegally on a skyscraper rooftop in China. That’s the lesson gleaned from a pair of bizarre luxury homes built on top of apartment towers in Beijing and Shenzhen, one a mountain-shaped penthouse and the other a traditional temple with lush landscaping. Both were built without planning permission, and the faux mountain pools and ponds of the former are unsurprisingly causing serious flooding issues for those unlucky enough to live on the floors below.
Tiny Houses in a Parking Garage
Millions of vacant parking spaces around the world could be occupied by tiny houses, as proven by Savannah College of Art and Designs’ SCADpad project. The experiment turned a parking garage into a village of 135-square-foot micro houses, each designed and decorated by students, transforming previously uninhabitable urban space into comfortable and cozy homes.
