In Wake of housing crisis and rapid rise in cost of living, people experimenting new ideas to lower housing costs. As the population rises in the big metropolitan such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and cities like New York, Chicago, and Seattle, a new style of small space, dorm like housing has sprang up.

One University Professor come up an ingenious idea, merging the concepts of micro-housing and on-demand services (as well as downsizing for more affordable living in expensive urban neighborhoods), to build high-tech, compact living cubes that, modular style, that can slide into and out of steel frames tucked into undeveloped spaces in urban cores.

Before coming up with the idea, Kasita, Jeff Wilson, who is an environmental science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, spent 10 months living in a converted Dumpster in an experiment with cutting down on possessions and tiny housing. He then worked with industrial design firm Frog to create a template for a 208-square-foot, single-occupancy city apartment.

While most micro-apartment that looks like an out of shaped conventional apartments which an area of some 5×6 square meters, his apartment is as tiny as 3×6 square meters, 19.3 square meters to be precise.

“The prefab buildings are also fully loaded with smart tech. You can tell the glass to darken if you want privacy, turn on the lights and music, or ask for the morning news. Though the first units will plug into the grid, the startup envisions eventually running them off solar power stored in Tesla batteries and adding features like rainwater collection” Jeff told NextCity.org

The amazing part is that the apartment can be moved to different corner of the city and slid into a slot into an existing compatible building frame like a drawer on you desk. He hope that it will rent out $600 a month half the current market price for studios like this.

Moving swiftly to the next smallest apartment, micro-apartments, the University of British Colombia in Canada is also building brand new micro-apartment complex for it’s growing 50000 student body that are staying for longer period of time that is only 13 square meters (you could think of it as room 3 meter wide and 4 meter long, 3×4 square meters).

The only downside it notice is that you cannot use your while allowing a roommate to use your desk because the desk and the bedroom is one convertible item.

An alternative design exist where the kitchen, the bath room and living room are in a row in one 3×4 square meters apartment but the bed is on decker above the bathroom. Which is my favorite. It has everything you need.

Lastly, there an even smaller apartment/living space exist in Tokyo that more like hostel style bunk beds but each bed is more like a cage. It has it’s one sound proof doors and walls, tv, and a bed.

In conclusion, I think you can combine all of the above with food, cleaning and laundry plans to create a housing brand that help meet the needs of sing young people, travelers and those with family but at much cheaper prices. That way people can focus on their savings, on work and what they are good instead wasting time grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and etc… therefore, we will have better division and more efficient economy.