Modular homes and lived experience

The paper follows six residents of self-contained modular homes in Cambridge through longitudinal interviews. Each home was approximately 25 square metres. The study is concerned especially with residents’ experiences, independence, home-making, support and personal outcomes.

This close view complements the earlier ExoSett discussion of modular housing and homelessness, which considers a 2022 report mapping schemes across the UK. Here, the important question is not how many schemes exist, but what helps accommodation become a home.

The size of the Cambridge homes is not an ExoSett design recommendation, and the research should not be reduced to a claim that small homes work. ExoSett prescribes neither a universal module size nor a universal dwelling size. The ISO 668 1CCC-sized module in current material is an engineering example, and a dwelling may occupy several accommodation modules or frame cells.

The more useful lesson is that the quality and nature of the resulting home matter at least as much as the method used to manufacture it. The Accommodation design page develops how varied sizes, configurations and layouts can respond to occupants rather than imposing one standard dwelling.

Residents had private front doors, bathrooms and domestic space. Compared with hostels and other temporary accommodation, this gave them substantially more control over everyday life.

Accommodation should support privacy, visitors, possessions, personalisation and the establishment of routines. ExoSett cannot itself create autonomy or wellbeing: those outcomes depend on good design, appropriate management and wider social conditions. A building system can, however, make room for accommodation that supports ordinary domestic life.

An accommodation module is an engineering object while it is manufactured, transported, installed, removed or refurbished. Once installed and occupied, it becomes part of someone’s home.

That distinction matters. A cassette lifecycle must not cause an occupied dwelling to be treated as a disposable product. Good accommodation should allow residents to personalise their surroundings and develop attachment, familiarity and a sense of ownership over their domestic environment.

The study cautions against assuming that one form of accommodation suits everyone. One resident found the move into a substantially larger conventional flat difficult. This does not show that smaller homes are generally preferable; it shows that suitable accommodation depends on the individual or household.

Needs also change through life. A person leaving homelessness may initially need particular support; households grow or contract; relationships, work and finances change; disability may arise; people age. ExoSett therefore seeks to enable different dwelling sizes, configurations and layouts, and buildings that can adapt over time. This is an ExoSett design principle informed by the broader questions the research raises, not a finding claimed by the paper.

The study reports improvements in areas including safety, relationships, money and substance-use management, employment readiness and personal stability. The authors associate these outcomes with private accommodation combined with substantial wrap-around support—not with modular construction alone.

Architecture and construction can help create supportive conditions, but policy, funding, management, services and human relationships remain essential. ExoSett cannot by itself produce the outcomes described in the study.

The Cambridge scheme benefited from a relatively central location with access to transport and essential services. The authors caution that future “meanwhile” sites may not share those advantages.

The ExoSett Location page considers this as a wider design principle: an accommodation frame could be long-lived infrastructure in a good place, while its accommodation changes over time.

Some modular-housing approaches move complete homes between temporary sites. ExoSett may instead allow a useful location, accommodation frame and service infrastructure to remain while individual modules are changed, removed, refurbished or replaced.

A plausible intended cassette lifecycle is manufacture → installation → occupation → removal → inspection, refurbishment or adaptation → subsequent reuse or redeployment. It does not assume a cassette would move directly from one occupied ExoSett building into another, and ExoSett has not yet demonstrated this lifecycle in practice.

Modularity is not what makes a home successful. The strongest lesson for ExoSett is to support good accommodation while leaving room for architects, residents, operators and support organisations to address human needs.

Buildings need to change because lives change.

Read the original paper, return to Research and Reading, or continue with Accommodation design.