Modular housing has been praised for its potential to help communities more quickly add inventories of homes. Portions of the home are built in a factory and then assembled on site to help speed up delivery times.
A U.K.-based company called
Ten Fold Engineering says it’s developed a series of modular housing structures that can be unfolded in less than 10 minutes without the need for builders, cranes, or foundations. The unit gets delivered to the construction site on a truck, and can then unfold up to three times its transport size. All internal fittings and fixtures are already pre-installed. It can also be quickly refolded if the unit needs to be moved to a new location.
The company says the folding partitions still allow for design based on the homeowners’ preferences and their needed room combinations. The units can also be interlinked or stacked to create larger homes or even a commercial building, like a hotel.
The company is moving its prototype toward production. It estimates a single unit’s starting price will be about $130,000.
