Vacant sites, billboards, roofs, and even dumpsters are often used as illegal housing. All types of urban surfaces can be turned into safe, dry shelters, they are often used to circumvent local laws and fit very well into the urban environment.
Billboard body
Belgian artist and activist Karl Philips focuses on topics such as gaps in legal, economic, and social systems, ubiquitous advertising, rampant capitalism, and consumer protection. Therefore, it is not surprising that he decided to turn a billboard into an illegal apartment. The apartment is invisible from the street, consists of a simple wooden platform and a transparent plastic case. A similar project appeared in Mexico City: they built a house (50 square meters) at the back of the billboard as a residence for artists who manually painted the billboard for the paper company Scribe.
Bouncy house
Attach a custom-made plastic shelter to the ventilation hole in the building, and you get instant inflatable shelter for the homeless. Michael Rakovits creates these “paraSITE shelters," which, by their size, are in line with the legal definitions of temporary structures, at costs less than five dollars.
Trash can housing
Artist Gregory Kloen turned an ordinary trash can into a shelter with a working kitchen and toilet, pantry and bedroom, as well as a modular roof terrace, outdoor shower, flower beds and even a bar. It took six months to change the house in Brooklyn, in which Kloen actually lives part-time. Perhaps this is the perfect urban camouflage, the trash can is no different from any other trash can when it is completely closed.
Vertical city camp
The A-Kamp47 project, developed by Malka Architecture, provides the homeless with a safe place to sleep. It consists of 23 tents vertically stacked on the wall. As part of the project, 47 people were granted asylum in Marseille (France), based on the fact that, according to local laws, no one can be evicted from housing in winter.
Roof illegal construction in China
If you are rich enough to build your dream estate, but do not want to leave the city and agree to illegal accommodation, then you can settle in China on the roof of a skyscraper. So, on top of one of the apartment buildings in Beijing and Shenzhen, a penthouse in the shape of a mountain was built. It was built without planning permission, and the artificial mountain pools and ponds of this building pose problems for those who are unlucky to live on floors below.
Tiny Garage Homes
Millions of free parking spaces around the world can be occupied by tiny houses, which is proved by the SCADpad project of the Savannah College of Art and Design. During the experiment, garages of 40 square meters. meters were designed and decorated by students who turned the previously uninhabited urban space into comfortable and cozy houses.
Casa Rompecabeza
Located above street level on an unused wall in Seville, Spain, Casa Rompecabeza by Recetas Urbanas “fills the city's void” by occupying open spaces in the city (with permission of the property owners). The idea is that a mobile, easily assembled and disassembled studio can be used as inexpensive housing in the city, while also benefiting the owners of such unused premises.
Tree house
The Spanish design team, Recetas Urbanas, has created a series of structures that use loopholes and ambiguities in the Seville Housing Code to create free and affordable self-catering housing. One example is this curious looking sleeping container, a partisan home that clings to a tree.