Arcadis Construction, Engineering & Design by GineersNow Drones & Technologies in Construction Industry | Page 40

Would You Live in this Stackable House
Developed by an Engineer from Harvard?
It is a minimalist home.
Each Kasita unit, which costs $139,000, is
minimalistic in nature as seen from the rendered
photos below. The actual unit is unfurnished, by the
way, but is complete with the basic home divisions.
If you don’t mind the open-layout space that
doubles as a living room and bedroom, then this is
the home for you.
It is pre-fabricated, taking weeks to construct and
only a day to install. The home can be assembled
off-site and delivered in two to three weeks, the
former postdoctoral researcher at Harvard and IBM
project manager shared.
When there’s little land to build houses on, there’s
no other way but up – engineers go vertical
construction. This is what a Harvard engineer
has pondered on and went on to conceptualize
stackable homes.
“The way we build housing (and even skyscrapers)
hasn’t changed substantially in over 100 years and
a lot of that lag is because we haven’t updated the
way we approach building,” he added.
“A house is built once and it’s only improvement will
Jeff Wilson, who was formerly the dean of Huston- be a marble countertop replacement in 30 years.
A Kasita product can iterate version upon version
Tillotson University in Texas, lived in a dumpster
and improve based on user experience.” Now the
for a year. Coming from this experience he
realized that “tiny living”, or a minimalist lifestyle, is company is waiting for preorders. The first Kasita
unit will be delivered in June of 2017.
the way to go.
“While the experiment was extreme, the
experience I gained by living small and simple
made a big impression,” he said. “At the end of
the year, I left the dumpster with the concept for
a new category of housing — a beautiful, small
footprint home designed as a solution for the
growing housing crisis.
“ His concept of stackable houses were
materialized through a housing startup called
Kasita, which was founded in 2015. It got its
name from the word “casita”, which is the Spanish
for “little house”.
The company offers a 352-square foot of housing
units, able to be used individually or stacked for
occupancy of multiple families. For comparison,
the average one-car garage measures about 260
square feet.
38
Construction Leaders • May 2017