Boxed in on both sides, this once-homely little garage space is now a cozy high-end condo, its rusted white corrugated metal front replaced with a still-concealing wood facade serving to hide something much more dynamic inside.

Designed by FABRE/deMARIEN, this ‘100% Box’ home features white walls and ceilings, reinforcing lightness and openness toward the front of the space, an area containing a kitchen and dining room as well as a front entry deck.

A wood-paneled box in back serves all kinds of additional functions, housing a series of desk and seating built-ins, enclosing a small bathroom and supporting the elevated bedroom with bed and storage above.

The sloping roof helps provide higher ceilings in the back spaces as well as accommodating the additional needs of the raised bedroom area, with periodic sunlights to help illuminate all of the above. Enclosed on all sides, this urban infill lot reuse manages to feel spacious and open despite the limitations of its site.

A pragmatic twist on visionary plug-and-play architecture, this project combines a cheap and fast-growing material with existing (abandoned) infrastructure to address the extensive needs of existing informal communities of Hong Kong.

Putting buildings within buildings, the Bamboo Micro-Dwelling plan was born of both practical realities and city-in-the-sky ideas of Utopian Modernists like Le Corbusier.

Designed by AFFECT-T, each basic micro-dwelling starts out at  just a few meters in length, width and height, with essential cooking, sleeping and sitting areas. Thanks to their placement inside a larger deserted structure, these units have fewer active-system, insulation and cladding demands than autonomous exterior equivalents would.

Like a more formalized (less-dystopian) version of Kowloon Walled City, the design calls for community and education spaces to be built into the open spaces of the factory floors and voids between individual dwellings.

Within the bigger building around them, this group of “homes will be serviced through a singular backbone providing water and electricity to individual units and disposing of waste, while cooling, heating, structure, and enclosure are provided” at scale by their surroundings.

At the individual-unit level, flexibility “aids in the overall adaptability of the larger community as units can be joined and easily separated and altered as the population changes. “

The demand for such a solution definitely exists: in total, an estimated 280,000 Hong Kong residents are without permanent, stable and legal structures to call home.

However, these micro-dwelling deployments are conceived of not as a permanent state but, rather, a transitional set of spaces. They simply make maximum use of available materials and existing buildings to create effective temporary communities for a population that needs to be shifted off the streets and out of shacks toward sustainable long-term housing.

For those who can accept a bit of ironic kitsch in the mix, here is a cute (and functional) solution for city dwellers sick of their only scenery being a brick wall across the alleyway, to the soundtrack of a loud window-unit air conditioner.

Babilawn, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, goes beyond visual aesthetics, helping to dim the din of noisy air conditioning and potentially keep birds off your window unit as well (or encouraging them, depending on what you add to your custom scene).

Accessories include everything from grass and flowers to miniature white picket fences and tiny garden gnomes, but also pint-sized graffiti walls for a bit of urban color. The magnetic grass mat slots onto the top of your air conditioner, covering up the ugly top and letting you set up something a bit more visually appealing from both inside and outside your home.

It uses super-strong, rare-earth magnets to remain attached in extreme weather conditions. The composite units are also modular so they can fit various sizes of air conditioners. Its creators are still testing the theory, too, that it might make air conditioners more efficient by providing shade for the units as well.

So how far are they into the design and distribution process? The process so far, quoted from their fundraising page: “It all started with a simple sketch which led to creating and testing the initial concept. From this proof of concept we were able to design and develop an Alpha prototype using 3D CAD and SLS 3D printing. We tested the alpha prototype and noted some areas for improvement.

“We made the adjustments to the cad model and now, as it was featured in the video above, we have a fully functioning production-ready beta prototype that is patent pending. We conducted preliminary market analysis which includes evaluating demand, retail pricing, and competitive research. We sourced domestic and international manufacturing and fulfillment companies.” Check out their campaign on Kickstarter.