Design Firm Seeks to Transform Billboards Into Housing for the Homeless

UK-based firm DesignDevelop has a plan that turns billboards into housing units for society's least fortunate.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

UK-based firm DesignDevelop has come up with a plan to create thousands, possibly millions, of homes for society's least fortunate members. “The Gregory Project” is an endeavor to find viable alternatives for the homeless population by making use of advertisement spaces such as billboards. Billboards already exist all over the country, and they are expensive to maintain, construct, and rent. DesignDevelop proposes to turn these spaces into functional quarters that could be completely paid for by the rents the façade commands. According to the plans, billboards would be transformed into triangle-shaped living areas that could operate at minimal maintenance costs.

“If we take the electricity cost needed for the billboard to keep it lit during the night and we try to optimize it by x%, we find that this saved energy could cover all those interior usage needs.” said DesignDevelop. The triangular living area would contain a kitchen, an office desk, a bedroom with a bed, a storage area, and a bathroom with a washbasin, a wardrobe, a toilet, and a shower.

In order to get firms on board with the project, DesignDevelop has come up with a clever incentive. Companies that rent out the façades would be given an official logo which they could post on websites or other propaganda materials, signaling to its customers and potential customers that it is a socially conscious corporation.

Currently, the project is undergoing feasibility studies in the republic of Slovakia, and the results, so far, are positive.

RELATED: Pop Up Shelters May Help Solve Problems of Homelessness and Aid Relief
RELATED: 10 Design Firms Lead by Young People That Are Changing the Way We Look at the World

[via Designboom]

Latest in Style