Articles
LOOK: Lanefab Microhousing
Neighborhoods in Vancouver tend to facilitate walking, biking, and public transit with greater ease than the the vast majority of...
08.05.09
That could change, however, as the combination of recent legislation (legalizing the conversion of garages and laneways into secondary housing) and a new company called LaneFab will make it possible for residents to convert their garages and lanes into small, attractive, efficient houses for family members or renters, thereby contributing to a denser, lower impact, more resilient city for all.Lanefab is the brainchild of the carpenter Mat Turner and the designer Bryn Davidson. The units were inspired by Davidson's personal experiment in small-footprint living: the RAO/D Pod, a 360-square-foot condo that he and his wife gutted, renovated, and transformed into a beautifully efficient-if remarkably small-home. In the Pod, where the couple currently lives, there lies an exciting conceptual blueprint for Lanefab's low-impact designs, which make great use of tiny spaces, and which could enable many more people to rent homes in the city's central, walkable, and otherwise pricey areas."Vancouver's lane system [presents] a real opportunity," says Davidson, who five years ago founded the Dynamic Cities Project, a nonprofit organization designed to help communities respond to the challenges of climate change and oil depletion. "I think between seventy and ninety thousand lots in the city are now open to laneway housing."