Imagine a prefab, self-sufficient sustainable permanent ultra-light building, without foundation, that can be built in only three days!
What do we do? Our goal is to provide these houses to the inhabitants of disaster areas. We develop prefabricated houses that can be mounted without any technical knowledge. This way the demand for housing can be fulfilled despite the lack of technicians. With the increasing housing problem in the world, we have decided to give the people an opportunity to take action into their own hands. Why wait until someone builds you a place to stay, when you can do it yourself if supplied with the right equipments. And our house is not just some garden shed, it is supplied with both an electricity and water network. All basic needs are met so that the quality of life gets a chance of increasing because of a stable home.
What are the features? Our houses are easy to build and make use of a ‘plug-and-play’ or ‘IKEA’ concept. The materials we want to use are sustainable and recyclable. We designed our houses to be light-weight and prefabricated with a lifetime of at least 10 years. We are aiming at the lowest production, transport and storage costs possible with our housing. It will be impact resistible, wind and waterproof, heat insulating and resistant to temperature variation, which is very important in some of the aimed regions. Think about Syria, for example, it can have very cold nights contrasted by very warm days. A house should be resistant to that, and ours is. Furthermore it is designed to be fire resistant. We have also taken some safety measures into account. The material should not cause any allergies or other health problems both during installation and use. In addition to that, the materials must comply with EU environmental requirements.
What distinguishes us? The good thing about our prefab houses is that we are independent of building tools for construction. We have created an easy on site assembly design which meets the knowledge level of the local manpower. And in the worst scenario easy knowledge transfer to local manpower. Something that many others lack is an infrastructure installation and electrical wiring. In our case it is already built into the construction elements; during the assembly the desired connections can easily be realized. Furthermore, a complete waste water system is built into the structure, so that the inhabitants are guaranteed with clean water even if the supply is limited. Lastly, the environment is a central point in our project, we want to create houses which have a reduced waste volume together with a reduced environmental impact.
So where do we stand? We have come very far in the research process of our prefab houses. However, further development is still required, and this is why we would be very happy to cooperate on a research level with educational partners and innovative companies. Furthermore prototyping still needs further elaboration, though this requires materials. In order to start production we are looking for investors from the construction world, who would like to undertake this together with us.
