Casa Insecto – Shelter Attached to a Tree
Spanish design collective Recetas Urbanas created a series of structures that take advantage of loopholes and ambiguities in Seville’s housing code for free and affordable DIY shelter. One example is this curious-looking sleeping pod, which clings to the side of a tree.
Casa Rompecabeza
Perched above street level on an unused wall in Seville, Spain, Casa Rompecabeza by Recetas Urbanas “fills urban voids,” occupying vacant lots in the city (with permission of the property owners.) The idea is that mobile, easily assembled and disassembled studio housing could take advantage of such spaces, offering inexpensive lodging in the city and benefitting the owners of such unused spaces at the same time.
Secret City: The Illegal Architecture of Taiwan
A project called Instant City uses Taipei’s conventional architecture as a platform and energy source for parasitic, unsanctioned urban farms, night markets and other social gathering spaces. Bug Dome is an “un-official social club for illegal workers coming from the Chinese countryside to the city,” while Treasure Hill was an illegal hillside community built by and for low-income Taiwan residents. They also built a wood-beam ‘cocoon’ on top of an abandoned five-story building reclaimed by architecture, design, sociology and environmental professors and students as the ‘Ruin Academy.’
