MICRO COMPACT TREE VILLAGE
by Sarah Rich
Remember the Micro Compact Home? It’s the tiniest of the small homes we’ve talked about. A fusion of Japanese-inspired design and European manufacturing, the mini-minimalist dwelling manages to meet all your basic needs. Now m-ch has taken thirty of their little cubes and stacked them into a Tree Village.
The homes themselves do not sit in trees, but on steel poles up to 15m high, arranged in a cylindrical formation around an open central shaft. The footprint on this concept is as tiny as the living space, just 12m-sq, to allow the villages to be built among tall, mature trees, and the rooftop of each house becomes a deck for the one above it (green roof opportunity!). Like the free-standing micro compact home, the units in the Tree Village incorporate energy-efficient materials and technologies, including LED low-temperature lighting and low-emission glass.
As is clear from the model, this project has yet to be realized - it would be amazing to see it built! The team has proposed it as student housing for a European university. Few things could make me want to go back to college more than the opportunity to live in a high-tech Japanese tea room dorm in the trees.
Get Inhabitat Email
[…] http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/04/05/micro-compact-tree-village/ […]