With many urban areas becoming overcrowded, and housing becoming ever more expensive, we have seen a number of solutions aimed at developing innovative urban planning. These include a roof-top micro-house based around an air duct and a modular building that assembles itself. Now a team at Casagrande Laboratory, a Finnish architecture and innovation firm, has designed a micro-house that can be built in one night and has a foot-print the size of just one car parking place – 2.5 by 5 meters. The house, dubbed Tikku (meaning ‘stick’ in Finnish) is assembled out of cross-laminated timber (CLT), which is five times lighter that reinforced concrete. With a thickness of 20cm, the CLT will also provide enough insulation on its own for even the cold Finnish winters.

The Tikku does not require any foundation, it balances on a sand-box, and it can be placed on almost any street. It is constructed of modules that can be adapted to a variety of purposes, from bedroom to green-house, office space, kitchen, or sauna. The Tikku is also adapted for off-grid living. It uses a minimum of fresh water, produces its own energy with solar panels and has dry toilets, which do not require connection to a sewer.

The first full-scale prototype of the Tikku was created for the 2017 Helsinki Design Week and had three floors containing spaces for sleeping, working and a greenhouse. Casagrande hopes that Tikku will encourage cities to turn away from spaces that are a no-man’s land, and create a more communal cityscape in which “many Tikkus can grow side-by-side like mushrooms and … fuse into larger organisms”. What other uses might there be for a building that can fit into a parking space?