Space. It’s the ultimate possession. It’s at the crux of housing debate, shifting zoning regulations, underlining new designs for greater density, fueling debates about not in my back yard, and yet falls easily into the hands of luxury home buyers.
The Census Bureau has been tracking the size of new homes in the United States since 1973, when the median size of a newly built home was just more than 1,500 square feet. In 2015, that number reached almost 2,500.
In other parts of the world, people are living with much less space. According to information posted to Reddit, in Europe in 2015, the average home size was just 1,883, 25% less space than Americans were living with at that time.
For years this hasn’t been an issue, but now, as the country faces housing supply shortages and affordability issues, space is a critical issue.
One person working on solving for that is HIVE dean and URBANEER CEO and founder Bruce Thompson. He talks to HIVE Re:Think podcast host Philip Beere about his path to creating more comfortable, sustainable, compact design, which he hopes will be the foundation for future housing in the US.
Thompson is working to bring his solutions to scale and is announcing a collaboration with Skyline Champion, one of the nation's largest manufactured and modular homebuilders, to create a set of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) with smaller living space- starting at 500 square feet. The design of the compact home is done in a way that changes perception so that it feels larger. It incorporaes flexible, configurable elements, like the URBANEER patented movable wall system.
The movable wall can work with a wall-bed system for the ability to have five activities in one space—working, dining, cooking, sleeping and entertaining/relaxing. This five-in-one flexibility, “room on demand,” approach is the hallmark of URBANEER’s approach to optimizing space.
The aim of the collaboration is to leverage select Skyline Champion manufacturing facilities bring the concepts to scale. The homes will feature the URBANEER movable wall system with attached wall table that can change the interior space on demand. The initial ADU designs also include an URBANEER queen wall bed with side storage tower system, a compact 13-foot kitchen with complimentary island, plus a full bath and laundry.
So, while the debate is centered on space, Thompson is betting on less. Attend HIVE to learn from Thompson’s initiatives – register now.
[Editor's Note: This story appears as it was originally published on our sister site www.hiveforhousing.com.]
