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We purposefully live in a very small house, purchased from best friends who have for a couple decades subscribed to small footprint, simple living. When they sold us their house, they moved to even smaller digs. They sold us their car, too, and did not replace it, but ride their collapsible (Brompton) bikes everywhere. I remembered seeing a photo they took of this prototype modular multifamily dwelling they toured, in which they’d posed their collapsed bikes in front of the colorful doors. I thought the dwelling was an exhibit that had long ago been removed. But, no. I spotted it in a place that had not occurred to me to look. . .UP! This two apartment model called “Inhabit” is perched on a downtown rooftop! You can read more about it here, and see the plans (now on hold due to the economic downturn) to build a multistory complex in South Lake Union from recycled cargo containers that are prefabricated into contemporary stackable digs that can be shipped anywhere. This is NOT your granny’s modular resort home! Thrift meets urban density design meets recycling.
I remember seeing something similar done with old horse drawn trolleys and cable cars that had been discarded in the dunes at the end of the line in Ocean Beach when the line converted to newer trolleys. People had started living in the discarded cars and the area was called “Carville.” Then some people stacked them and incorporated them into larger houses built in the last few blocks of the Outer Sunset. Looking out a friend’s back window there on 48th Avenue, I could still see the windshield and the headlamp of the cable car that nosed out the back of the house behind theirs. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all in a newly thrift-conscious era that cities all along the west coast are seeing sales in shipping containers for shed and home building use becoming tres popular. What do you think? Could you let go of enough “stuff” to live in something so small? I don’t think I could for very long.
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