Modular housing without second-class housing

FEANTSA considers modular housing through the wider idea of adequate housing. It identifies risks involving habitability, essential services, location, tenure and social integration, particularly when modular projects are directed at people already facing housing exclusion.

An ExoSett building should still provide appropriate space, thermal comfort, ventilation, daylight, accessibility, privacy, safety, sanitation, services, durability and amenity. Construction method does not reduce those obligations. The Accommodation design page states this as a wider design principle.

This critical policy perspective complements the collection’s discussions of industrialised construction, industry expectations, UK homelessness schemes and residents’ lived experience.

The brief describes supposedly temporary accommodation that remained occupied much longer than intended. A temporary label cannot make inadequate housing acceptable.

ExoSett adaptability should not be confused with disposable housing. A building could instead be permanent infrastructure containing changeable accommodation. The ability to remove or alter modules should support the building’s continuing usefulness rather than lower the standard expected at the beginning.

Adaptability should raise the long-term value of housing, not lower the standard expected of it.

The brief draws on poor experiences of some converted shipping-container housing. ExoSett’s current ISO 668 1CCC 20-foot High Cube dimensions are a reference envelope for engineering examples, not a universal module or dwelling size and not a proposal to convert shipping containers into homes.

An accommodation module should be purpose-designed unless a project deliberately chooses otherwise. Its dimensions remain a trade-off involving architecture, manufacture, transport, handling, installation and removal. Container dimensions do not themselves establish an acceptable housing standard.

FEANTSA treats access to employment, healthcare, education, childcare, transport and other services as part of adequate housing. Modularity should not become an excuse to place people on marginal or isolated land simply because it is easier to obtain.

An ExoSett accommodation frame could be long-lived infrastructure in a good place, whose accommodation can change over time. If the frame and service infrastructure remain useful across several generations of accommodation, investment in a good location may retain value as the building changes. This is a design possibility, not an economic claim, and ExoSett does not resolve land supply, planning or affordability. The Location page develops the principle.

The brief discusses projects whose appearance, labelling or physical separation distinguished residents from surrounding communities. People should not be identifiable or stigmatised by the construction method of their home.

The construction system need not determine the architectural identity of the building. Façades, balconies, entrances, roofs, landscaping, communal areas and materials can respond to the building and its surroundings. The accommodation frame, service frame and removable modules are engineering concepts; they need not be the completed building’s visual identity.

This does not mean unlimited freedom. Structure, fire safety, access, environmental performance and cassette handling constrain design. The objective is to separate the interfaces needed for adaptation from the architectural expression appropriate to a particular place, avoiding the assumption that modular housing must look repetitive or institutional.

Water, sanitation, energy and other services are part of adequate housing. The service frame is intended to help utility provision evolve independently from accommodation.

In principle, tanked and pumped wastewater might later give way to mains sewerage, local generation to mains electricity, or satellite communications to fibre. These examples are not engineered ExoSett specifications. They illustrate how improving services might avoid replacing accommodation, and changing accommodation might avoid rebuilding useful service infrastructure.

FEANTSA warns against segregated provision for vulnerable groups. ExoSett should not be understood principally as a way to create special-purpose compounds. Adaptability could instead support ordinary buildings and neighbourhoods whose accommodation changes over time.

Tenure and social policy remain matters for each project and community. Architectural and planning decisions should nevertheless consider connections and integration rather than assuming that modular accommodation must be physically or socially separate.

The ability to install, remove, refurbish or replace accommodation matters only insofar as it helps create and maintain good places to live. The engineering mechanism is not the outcome.

Modularity changes how housing can be manufactured, maintained and altered. It should not change what residents are entitled to expect from a home.

An adaptable home is still a home.

Read the original policy brief (PDF), return to Research and Reading, or explore ExoSett design.