By Lucy Wang / Source: Inhabitat

scadpad

Tiny homes are increasingly touted as the new eco-friendly American dream for Millennials—but what if the micro-housing trend could also be combined with adaptive reuse to solve the shortage of urban housing? An interdisciplinary team of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) students, staff, and alumni explored that question by transforming an underused Atlanta parking deck into SCADpad, a community of three micro-residence prototypes. No bigger than the footprint of a parking space, each 153 square foot unit is themed after three continents where SCAD maintains a campus: North America, Asia, and Europe. Combining urban design, architecture, and artful living, this unique micro-housing experiment is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Inhabitat was invited to join the official unveiling and even spent the night in a SCADpad unit. Read on to get the scoop on these innovative micro houses and the possible future face of urban living.

According to the 2012 U.S. Census, there are 105 million parking spaces in the United States–a number that roughly translates to five parking spaces for every registered car. As personal automobile ownership declines and demand for dense urban living increases, SCAD wants to turn the growing obsolescence of the parking garage into an opportunity for adaptive reuse. Often located in areas of prime real estate, these underused parking garages could be redeveloped into attractive and affordable urban housing, particularly for young professionals. “Parking structures are cold, uninhabitable spaces built for cars, not humans,” said Christian Sottile, Dean of the School of Building Arts, SCAD. “At SCAD, we see many of these 20th century structures as a huge adaptive reuse and historic preservation opportunity to bring art and design together to delight the user and sustainably evolve these buildings already in place.”

Images © Lucy Wang