Behold – and unfold – your future home! Even better, watch as your new home unfolds itself right before your eyes! Meet the unfolding house…
Imagine a lorry arriving at a lovely plot of land you’ve just bought, then with the simple press of a button, your dream house unpacks itself in less than ten minutes, transforming from a trailer into a building up to ten times its original size complete with kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Press the button again and the house packs itself back up for transport to a new location. So much quicker and easier than moving house or embarking on a self-build project, that’s for sure!
Or how about a home away from home? No more holidaying in sub-standard accommodation missing your own bed… You could take your bed – and your whole house – with you. Sound like bliss? It certainly does to us!
The company behind the innovative folding house concept is UK-based company Ten Fold Engineering that has created a clever patented lever-based system that uses counterbalanced folding linkages which help transform the shape and utility of a variety of products to create modular, self-deploying structures (such as bridges, houses and stadiums). These transformations occur without the need for a huge team of builders to construct the structure from scratch or for power to start the transformation process off – which makes the designs ideal for disaster relief applications when power is often not available. See some examples of how the manufacturers imagine the levers can be used in the video renders below.
Although an unfolding unit has been prototyped as demonstrated in the video below, most of the designs above are conceptual, with the company preferring to licence the unfolding technology it has developed to manufacturers who would like to deploy the technology themselves. A recent Facebook post announces that licences have already been granted to companies in the UK, Australia and Korea!
The working prototype
The company says its patented technology “can support an unlimited range of design possibilities” and they have certainly dreamed up a wide variety of unfolding modular styles for our enjoyment. See some examples below:
The Treehouse
The Country Cabin
Moot Hall – Tent style
House on stilts
Internally the units can be fitted with unfolding worksurfaces, bathrooms, kitchens and bedroom furniture; they can also be pre-fitted with a variety of add-on modules to provide extra storage, off-grid power systems and water-treatment systems.
From spare rooms to offices, to shops, hotels and pop up restaurants, these innovative designs certainly offer an alternative modular housing solution as well as a whole host of other building and engineering applications; it has certainly ‘unfolded our minds’ thinking about all the potential uses for this simple but clever technology.
