One Square Inch House – The Hand Up Project

I thought my Nine Tiny Feet house project was small until I saw this. Now I guess when you’re client is physically small like Elizabeth Demaray’s hermit crab friends the requirements for affordable housing change a little. Are you asking yourself if this is serious? Good, keep reading…

Elizabeth Demaray, project lead of The Hand Up Project is attempting to tackle the increasing housing shortage for land hermit crabs, no lie. You see due to the increasing loss of naturally available seashells, land hermit crabs are running out of places to live. Land hermit crabs have not natural shell of their own. Instead they reuse shells they find. As they grow they find bigger shells. To help solve this real housing shortage Elizabeth Demaray is designing tiny shells based upon the designs of Guiseppe Terragni, a fascist architect working in the late 1920’s. Then using rapid prototyping and computer aided design technology new shells are cut from one piece of plastic. The end result is a roomy shell with a very low size to weight ratio. In this case the fact that these shells are not biodegradable is a good thing since generations of hermit crabs will be able to reuse these shells over and over. Photo credit Elizabeth Demaray.

How’s that for alternative thinking?