Mutually beneficial for both the homeless and big companies looking for some good PR fodder, the Slovakia-based firm Designdevelop has proposed a clever plan to use the wedge-shaped space behind highway billboards in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia as inexpensive, highly efficient housing. Called The Gregory Project, the hidden hut initiative would be funded in part by the advertisers buying out the billboard space (there's the whole corporate charity angle) and would be moderately cheap in upkeep. Like past billboard-centric projects, the interiors are designed to be as simple as possible—offering just a lofted bed, a desk, and a small bathroom—but markedly less cramped and more livable than other trendy but impractical tiny dwellings out there.
The only glaring flaw is that it's not exactly sensible or all that desirable to live directly off major interstates, far removed from employment opportunities. Still, if adapted for billboards in major cities, the project could effectively combat homelessness one high-design cabin at a time. Hyperallergic has a few more renderings, this way.
· Rethinking the Billboard as a Home [Hyperallergic]
· Stand Aside, Micro-Homes: This Billboard is an Apartment [Curbed National]