Win a night in the m-ch (micro compact home)

As part of the Festival of Extreme Building in Birmingham this summer, you can win a night's stay in the m-ch as featured on this site. To enter click here. The m-ch - pictured here on site - is very much the centrpiece of the project which brings a variety of interesting experimental structures to the city. To find out more about the m-ch itself, go to its very own website here.

Living in a micro compact home

We've covered Richard Horden's m-ch elsewhere on the site several times since it seems to us to be the future of shedworking and with its appearance at MOMA later this month coverage of its advantages is on the up. Hannah Booth in The Guardian (which this weekend had a glut of stories on sheds and yet no mention of National Shed Week) covers similar descriptive ground but her piece stands out because she actually talks to somebody who lives in a m-ch in Munich, architecture student Matthias Franz, who was in student digs before moving into his m-ch in April. Here's an excerpt:

"It's better quality living," he says. "I have my own kitchen, I can hear the birds singing, and I can sit out. It's sociable - I have barbecues with my neighbours." And rent is €150 a month - half what he paid before. Is there anything he misses? "Some proper hanging space, and a shoe rack - my trainers sit under the toilet. But I had 22 people round for a party once." Franz cooks "noodles, salads, nothing complicated" in the evening. Such compact living isn't for everyone, he says. "You have to be neat, tidy, pretty organised - and open to new experiences."

Booth adds that the Irwell Valley Housing Association is building six m-chs in Manchester to provide temporary accommodation for key workers.

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m-ch crosses the Atlantic (and coming soon to London?)

The micro-compact home (m-ch), inspired by frequent flights on business class, is to make its US debut this summer at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling (20 July - 20 October 2008). It is a low energy lightweight prefabricated dwelling pioneered by Professor Richard Horden and his fellow teachers and students of the department of Architecture and Product Design, Technical University Munich.

Selected from 400 architectural projects, the 2,65m aluminium cube is one of five full-scale prefabricated homes to be displayed in the outdoor space to the west of MoMA’s building. The five projects will be shown in the context of a further 58 projects displayed in the sixth-floor International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Gallery, offering the most thorough examination to date of both the historic and contemporary significance of factory-produced architecture from 1833 to today.

In the UK, m-ch Ltd are currently seeking planning permission for a development of units on a brown field site in central London, the details for which will be announced this summer.

Icy shedworking

From Horden Cherry Lee architects who brought us the m-ch micro compact home, here is the m-igloo for icy shedworking. Designed by Ingrid Galitzdorfer and Christina Mueller, it's a two person antarctic bivouac and was inspired by snowmobiles and, maybe less guessable, penguins.

And from the same practise is the SkiHaus, above, a mobile alpine hut (or‘hard tent’) built from lightweight aluminium and weighing only 315 kg. The SkiHaus comes with self-sufficient energy systems powered by solar and wind generators and is designed to be lifted into position by helicopter. It has already been tested at nearly 4,000m up in the Swiss Alps and is being used as medical centres, for guide training and for skiers and climbers. This is how their site very poetically describes it:

"SkiHaus was conceived while skiing late and high in the Alps: evening sun, a beautiful, clear, starlit night, twinkling lights of the village in the valley, a reluctance to return: Would it be possible to stay here in the beautiful, cold silence?"

micro compact home

Another look into the future of shedworking with the micro compact home [m-ch] from architect Richard Horden. It's a lightweight compact building, a 2.6m cube, in which you can live as well as work. It has a timber frame structure with anodised aluminium external cladding, insulated with polyurethane and fitted with aluminium frame double glazed windows. A eco-friendly version is available powered by pv solar cells and a small wind generator mounted on the roof. Inside are two beds, shower and a kitchen. The design has various inspirations including a Japanese tea-house. For more information, go to the interesting site here.

Cuberotate

With echoes of the m-ch, Jan Sturm's intriguing Cuberotate focuses on the idea of a house being made up of little cubes, each with wellinsulated wooden walls, pretty much self-sufficient in terms of energy with its photovoltaic panels. It has folding and pull-out furniture so the whole thing become a multi-tasking live-work atmsophere. And if you want to change your views, you can rotate the whole darn thing by hand like George Bernard Shaw's garden office, one of Shedworking's pet loves.
Via Judit Bellostes
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Portable architecture

An interesting article in The Guardian by Steve Rose looks at the rise of shedlike atmospheres or as he calls them "space-age cubes, rooftop pods, giant caravan cities and garden sheds you can practically live in". The piece features various shedworking favourites including the m-ch, Nils Moormann's Walden and the Loftcube, not to mention the Airstream. Rose comments that these buildings "suggest a shift in the relationship between architecture and nature, a renegotiation between the space we enclose for ourselves and the "outside"." He goes on to say:

"The trend towards mobile, lightweight, eco-friendly lifestyles is growing. Californian architect and academic Jennifer Siegal has even coined a term to sum it up: new nomadism. Architecture is currently one step behind, she says: "We're working and living in a very different way, and yet our buildings have remained static, heavy structures. Our cars are smart, our clothing is smart, our materials are smart and our buildings are still these heavy boxes."

Well worth a browse.

Live/work in a shed

This video comes from the BBC who sent a reporter to try out what I think is the micro compact home [m-ch] from architect Richard Horden (featured on this site here). Thanks to the eagle-eyed Wilco for spotting this.