There’s an Innovative New Design Concept to House London’s Homeless

From recycled shipping containers to out-of-service city buses in Hawaii, North America keeps getting more innovative when it comes to housing the most disadvantaged.

Now, fresh from London, there’s a new concept to hit our radar – and they’re called “parasitic sleeping pods.”

Once you get over the whole “parasitic” reference, the pods – designed by James Furzer, an architectural technician from the University of Greenwich – are actually pretty smart.

The impressively designed pods can be attached to any building to offer a safe space for some of London’s most vulnerable to sleep. They’re accessible via ladder and offer a safer, dryer place to sleep than the streets.

According to Furzer, the hope is that the pods would be monitored by charities that are focused on combating homelessness so that the users could enter and exit without any issues. In an ideal world, the same organizations would also provide the upkeep of the pod so that they remain clean and livable.

His design insertion came from the growing number of metal spokes in London’s public areas to deter the homeless from sleeping there. Even if they were able to, the streets are also increasingly violent in the Queen’s hometown. The number of homeless people “sleeping rough” has increased significantly in recent years.

Sadly, for now, Furzer’s pods are merely a design idea that only exist on paper.

Although the concept will be met with a few inevitable adverse reactions and political roadblocks, if it catches on, we suspect it won’t be too long before a crowdfunding page in the name of the cause starts to make its rounds on the internet.

Furzer’s design has already won the top prize in the ‘Space for New Visions’ competition organized by Farko, a global manufacturer of roof windows and loft ladders.

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