Hasta La Ideas

Of all the press I’ve been reading about a company called MEKA Modular Luxury Housing, the Wall Street Journal interview with MEKA’s Michael de Jong had the most arresting quote: “”It’s a product design, not a housing design.”

The concept behind MEKA is that they are pre-fab houses built from shipping containers, with one large exception to this been-there-done-that concept: It doesn’t look like crap. It looks freaking awesome.

They’re also astonishingly cheap, compared to building a custom house. There’s currently a MEKA on display in Manhattan’s West Village (as seen in Inhabitat and pictured below), the ALP320, which goes for just US $39,000. (The top of the line HELA1280 pictured up top goes for $128,000.)

As for the “product design” quote, the MEKA houses were partly inspired by the neverending stream of hidden costs that homebuilders can be hit with during the process. The MEKA, in contrast, comes out of the factory essentially finished, like a product design, so the pricing remains transparent.

Learn more about MEKA homes here.

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