How to live in a car park

All photos: ScadPad.com

One-third of the space in US cities is taken up by parking, according to one report. With younger buyers faced with unaffordable housing thanks to low supply levels and a lack of urban space,  Christian Sottile, dean of the School of Building Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), has come up with a solution: turn them into homes.

Dubbed SCADPad, Sottile led a team of university students and staff to create the tiny units, which span rougly 135 square feet.

“This was designed by millennials for millennials,” Sottile tells The Guardian. Indeed, the properties are as modern as they are miniscule, boasting everything from high-end furniture to iPad-operated smart glass windows.

“Sound-conductive” wallpaper covers one SCADPad Asia, which produces a noise when you press on certain patterns on the wall, while the units all include recycling facilities that repurpose "grey water" from the sink to water the community garden.

"As an urbanist, as an architect, as an academic leader I think this is exactly the kind of question that we should be asking right now," says Christian Sottile.