Room accommodations becoming quite expensive nowadays? Travelers on a shoestring budget are not the only ones looking for solutions. Martin Azua understands the burden of bringing heavy luggage in a bag, so he designed a house that could pop out anywhere.
According to Travel and Leisure, the Barcelona-based designer used polyester to trap temperatures and could be folded enough to fit into a pocket or a small zip-lock bag. His prototype, which he calls "Basic House" appeared in the New York City Museum of Modern Art.
While Basic House does not have the necessities associated with a modern home such as furniture, running water, electricity and gas and a bed, the polyester material used to create the box shape of the home is warm enough to sleep in within designated campgrounds in certain vacation destinations. The box, which balloons to form once unfolded, is spacious and it could possibly fit two individuals together.
According to Metro UK, Azua's Basic House was inspired as a counterpoint to modern shelters and housing. He said the human habitat has evolved "into a space of consumption" where solutions in the form of manufactured products and services make the "complex systems and relations difficult to control." He said the house intends to address these excesses by understanding habitat "in more essential and reasonable terms" in the form of an "immaterial house."
Azua stressed that his concept focused on living a nomadic life away from "material ties" associated with property ownership. While Basic House is yet to be on sale as it clearly needs more work for mass production, Azua's concept might just be the future of travel accommodations, but it has some contenders.
If this house fits in a pocket, Dr. Harriet Harris and Graeme Brooker makes one wear them like jackets. According to Mirror UK, made for refugees by the students of the Royal College of Art as a final project, the Kickstarter-backed refugee jacket doubles as a house. With the materials used and mass-production friendly design, it could rival Azua's concept in some degree.
