Skinny House

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Skinny House is a reinterpretation of the single-family house. But intensified by stacking housing units on top of each other: the multi-family house. A Skinny House is, as the name suggests, skinny, narrow. Instead of the traditional house width of 5.40 metres, a depth of ten metres and a rear garden of five metres, the skinny house is four metres wide. This offers opportunities to expand the floor area in height and depth. Stacking more and deeper living units on top of each other creates living space for multiple households. Parents with children, a young couple living together for the first time, and grandparents on the top floor. To make this possible, the Skinny Houses are equipped with a lift. This is how we create multi-family ‘ageing in place’ properties on a small footprint.
 

Narrow multi-family property
This narrow multigenerational property offers a solution to the enormous housing shortage, on a small (inner-city) building plot. Through smart financing structures, for example with one household owning the entire Skinny House in the main mortgage, and the other households renting from this household, it can offer an affordable solution for target groups that have difficulty obtaining housing.

A Skinny House consists of as many as eight to nine storeys, making clever use of space. The ground floor can be an office, with above it living space for several generations of the family. The open floor plan, with buffer zones for the necessary privacy, allows all households to be in contact with each other. Outdoor spaces are located on the roof area. At the very top floor or halfway up, if the building is recessed there. The green roof garden is simultaneously a water buffer zone, contributes to biodiversity, and provides coolness in the summer.

The Skinny House is sustainably built with prefabricated elements made of renewable materials that are detachable. This gives flexibility to respond to changing uses. Various sizes are possible: from 120 to 210 square metres. The difference in size is determined by the choice of programme and financing for each lot. This gives a variable mass structure.

Small ecological footprint
The houses are compact and efficient; no unnecessary materials are used. A less massive construction means less energy consumption and a small ecological footprint. The transport of materials, the foundation and support structure are also much more efficient with prefabricated construction, compared to the traditional single-family house with a backyard.

This concept was developed in collaboration with Koschuch Architects.