Mobile and modular houses: What if you could just add an extra room when you need more space?

“Proto-habitat”: A flexible eco-friendly house, easily dismantled in five days. Image: Wald.city via AFP Relaxnews.

Imagine an expandable house, to which you could easily add an extra room or even several ones. No need to turn your office space into a nursery. It would be quite a good way to avoid the stress of moving, especially if the building was eco-friendly. Does it sound like a concept out of the distant future? Not as much as you might think, since these types of new nomadic dwellings are seeing the light of day in France and worldwide.

At the beginning of 2020, as the first lockdown measures were being implemented in France, two French architects, Flavien Menu and Frederique Barchelard, came up with their “proto-habitat,” a flexible eco-friendly house, easily dismantled in five days.

Their life-size prototype, currently visible in Bordeaux Jardin Public in the southwest of France, covers a 30-square-meter surface on the ground level, with a 15-square-meter mezzanine and a 30-square-meter winter garden. You can also add “dismantling modules” if you need extra space. Frederique Barchelard explained to ETX Studio that with this approach, they wanted to “develop individual or collective housing that focuses on green and sustainable material while being economically affordable.”

The two French architects, who both spent a few years in London, wanted to invite reflection on our current way of life. They also designed a range of folding and transportable furniture aiming at the “new nomadic generation” or people who tend to move every three years.

Three years earlier, architect Julien Menard and designer Anseau Delassalle presented “Novablok,” a modular building made of assembling wood blocks (from 21.6 square meters) to accommodate inhabitants’ wishes to live in a loft or a more traditional house.

Innovative mobile dwellings are also attracting interest in other countries. In 2017, British company Ten Fold made waves with a living space that can be completely folded up in a few minutes. This offbeat type of portable house can be transported on a truck. The units are self-deploying; they can fold up or unfold with the mere click of a button of a handheld battery-powered drill — ultra convenient for the new generation of nomads who do not want to stay in the same place for too long. CC

RELATED STORIES: 

Mobile stores keep Ligao City residents at home 

Tiny homes setting next big trend