With house prices continuing to boom, despite the financial crash of a few years ago, the issue of providing affordable housing to people remains a constant concern.

I wrote earlier in the year about an innovative Dutch project that is providing low cost, temporary housing.

The Dutch architecture company Heijmans developed their Heijmans ONE concept in a bid to help graduates in Amsterdam who cannot afford to live in the city by providing them with ready made and affordable housing that is being temporarily placed in derelict urban sites.

The structures are two stories high and are equipped with kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room and a small outdoor space.  The skeleton of each construction is made from wood, and the structures produce energy themselves, so the hope is that energy costs will be marginal, although it isn’t clear just how they will tap into the utility network of the city.

Each home is made off-site in the Dutch town of Tilburg and Heijmans claim they can be installed in less than a day.  They also suggest that the quality of build is comparable with many new builds cropping up in western cities today.

3D printed homes

Another attempt to provide more affordable housing has emerged recently out of the Umeå University in Sweden.  Researchers at the university are hoping to make a complete home using 3D printing technology.

“The idea of the project is to develop a technology that can be used in reinforcing the manufacturing industry in the region. For Sliperiet the project, entitled the +Project, is a part of the strategy of forming collaboration in an open and interdisciplinary innovative environment. Here, meetings and collaborations are created between various scientific areas and together with companies in the region,” the team say.

The homes will be made out of cellulose based materials, with the aim being for +Project to appeal to a cross section of potential collaborators in the construction and creative markets.

Sustainability is at the core of the venture, and the team are working closely on a circular model for business and production.  The Swedish team hope to develop a center of excellence for the process in the region to capitalize on both the natural resources in the region and also the existing industries present in the area.