With all the sustainable and recycled projects, it is always fun to feature one that incorporates a material being used differently from its intended use, which we haven’t seen before. Of course, we can discuss whether the repetition of a recycled element categorizes it as a piece of architecture, yet, no matter our standing on that, we should agree that the pallets’ new function provides a surprisingly nice touch on the home’s exterior (especially with respect to the night time images). The home, entitled Pallet house is the creation of two students from the University of Vienna, and as the name suggests, reuses pallets to form a modular, energy efficient and affordable housing. The idea stemmed from a competition back in 2008, which the duo took first for, and now the homes have been exhibited in several European cities including Venice, Vienna, Linz and Grenoble. Currently in South Africa, the home costs 11USD per sq foot and could become a clever approach to low income housing.
More images after the break.
As seen on designboom
Looks pretty at night, but how to retain any degree of thermal comfort? Looking like a livable structure and functioning like one are two different things..
……reuses pallets to form a modular, ENERGY EFFICIENT and affordable housing.
i think that means that there is some kind of thermal insulation – between the pallets?
photo 11 shows exposed bulk insulation, and you can see in photo 8 how there is an extra stack of lined pallets internally… i presume its even waterproof. i’m more interested in how they get a 4.8m span out of the roof over the deck… kinda fun, got a nice sprinkling of “shazam”, but probably looks better as a lamp than a house…
I love it, but how many (sound) pallets are there in the world. It’s the same problem with fly ash – shouldn’t we be looking at elimiinating it rather than recycling it? So how many houses could you build with all of the unused pallets?
See also Pugh+Scarpa’s Make it Right House. Also an interesting use of pallet construction. Nice work.
anyone knows how these pallets are connected with each other ? help am a student trying to figure out a module similar to this!!
thank you