Super Mini House Workshop

This was a 3 day workshop conducted by Ar.Tetsuo Furuchi, Japan. The brief was to design a house for a young couple that can also accomodate guests in an area of 15 sq.mts.
My partner in the workshop, Ping and me felt that we should be able to achieve maximum free and usable space which can be used flexibly considering the limiting space. Hence we designed a house where all the essentials furniture,fixtures and components including the toilet can be planned and fitted in a very compact space like a cabinet and can be folded,unfolded or pushed & pulled out only whenver required. The space otherwise can be free of any obstruction which meant it could be used flexibly for any purpose as required by the couple.

We were supposed to name the house and we thought we should call it 'D.I.Y - Do It Yourself'

An important aspect of the design was the ease,speed and relative simplicty to install and assemble the house.
The house is designed as a combination of 2 or 3 modules with the internal components to be pre-planned as per specific requirements and which will fit in the cabinet.Another aspect we wanted was: the possibility of various configurations of the modules.We wanted to design for flexibilty to re-configure the modules to the specific needs of the occupants as and when required.
The whole unit is designed as a number of pre-fabricated,press fit and openable components where customization/replacement of components is possible/pre-determined in terms of the nature of the openable panels(louvered, fixed glass, sliding glass/solid infill panels,fabric,etc).
The angle of the Photovoltaic roofing panels can be adjusted to harness the solar energy and also be able to help in ventilation of the interior space. The roofing panels could also be changed from photovoltaic/solid insulating panels to transparent light admitting ones depending on the climatic need of the region where the unit is to be installed.