MICRO COMPACT HOME

"Smart living for a short stay." So goes the slogan for this petite house-machine. British architect and professor Richard Horden, a founding partner of Horden Cherry Lee Architects, along with Lydia Haack and John Höpfner of Haack + Höpfner Architects, began designing the micro compact home (m-ch) in 2001. Partnered with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, they sought to create the ultimate prototype for compact, efficient, and sustainable housing, a goal they have achieved with both compositional and commercial acumen.

At a mere 76 square feet, this perfect cubic form packs a remarkable amount of muscle into its tiny envelope. The project is intended as a modern "machine for living," providing functioning spaces of sleeping, working/dining, cooking and hygiene for one or two people. Taking inspiration from the aerospace and automobile industries, the architects fashion a "high performance" cocoon primarily geared toward single persons with a mobile work or leisure-oriented lifestyle

The house is constructed with a timber frame and clad in a panelized system of aluminum sheets. Following the installation of the support frame at the chosen site, the m-ch is hauled by truck or trailer and installed with a crane in minutes. In extreme siting circumstances it can be jacked into place or installed by helicopter. The m-ch is manufactured by micro compact home GmbH, an Austrian construction company, and is available exclusively in Europe for between €25,000 and €35,000.

The cubic units can either stand alone or be part of a greater "village," recalling some of the "plug-in" or "clip-on" techniques of the Metabolists. The system is an improvisation, morphing to the objectives of each particular clustering scheme in configurations ranging from simple pairs to massive highrises. The m-ch is an outstanding commercially available example of a contemporary prefabricated house that marries elegant form with high technology and viable sustainable practices. In delimiting the boundaries of the house to such a small envelope, the architects are making a bold statement regarding what is essential to life in the twenty-first century without sacrificing a meticulous aesthetic and brilliantly organized composition in a confident, compact package.

Horden Cherry Lee Architects, an award-winning architecture firm founded in 1999 and based in London, is noted for its pursuit and interpretation of "light" in design practice. Haack + Höpfner Architects, based in Munich, Germany, is an award-winning architecture firm. The contributors to the journal are Richard Horden, Director of Horden Cherry Lee Architects, Lydia Haack, Partner of Haack + Höpfner, and John Höpfner, Partner of Haack + Höpfner.

Cross Section

micro compact home and the Airbus A340

by Richard HordenFriday, May 09 2008

Herr Sander-Cargueville is director of the pure white passenger terminals at Munich Airport and, thanks to him and his team, for the past eleven years we have been fortunate to be able to take our students on a tour of the entire airport.

Munich Airport Center: Transrapid 400km/hr Maglev high speed airtrain mockup and Terminal Two

Munich has been voted the best Airport in Europe for five consecutive years; it is of great value to show our architectural students at the TU Munich.

In 2001 we made our July tour as usual and when inside the giant glass 300m span (almost 1,000 feet) maintenance hanger we came across the crew rest cabin for the long haul, four-engined Airbus A340, which was on a trolley in the hanger for maintenance.

The Crew Rest Cabin is built by Eurocopter to fit below the passenger cabin within the A340

This is basically a toughened airfreight container developed by Eurocopter to accommodate four to five crew beds for the alternative cabin crew on long haul flights. The crew cabin is slid into the baggage hold area and has a ladder that connects it to the galley on the passenger floor above. Like the m-ch today, it is built of aluminum with excellent task lighting, flat screen information panels, and sound system to link the rest crew to the main deck. The internal height of the cabin is only 1.6m, similar to the seat areas at the window position in most aircraft. Bill Lear designed his celebrated sitting-only private jet in the fifties and was heavily criticized in the press for doing so. He replied that you cannot stand up in a Ferrari, either!

Airbus A340 crew cabin interior

I was fascinated with the chance to make a sophisticated living 'cabin' using the same space, material, and weight saving principles. Eurocopter was contacted by our team and information was gathered to inform and progress project Tokyo 26/i-home design—later to become the micro compact home—and also for our other micro architecture projects. We now focus on the standing and sitting-only areas in other projects* in order to minimize material and land use, which also has the benefit of reducing carbon emissions in manufacture and costs and energy consumption during the project use. The design which we are now developing at the University and the London office and is called the family compact home, or the f-ch. This will also optimize space using the inspirational ideas of the Airbus crew rest cabin.

micro compact home 'student cabins' for the Universities in Munich

On Wednesday this week we will visit the m-ch factory where the micro compact home for MoMA is being completed and the installation of photovoltaic solar cells and wind turbine are being tested. In next week's blog I will explain the energy use and reduced carbon version of the m-ch.

* New Zealand Bach home / Waterside home / Family Compact home / Camera House / European Concept House etc.

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micro compact home and the Airbus A340

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