Beautiful Paper House Provides Low Cost Housing

Looking more like something out of a design magazine than a disaster area, the Universal World House is a full featured paper house created for people in desperate need for shelter. Designed for disaster victims, refugees and the urban poor, the UWH is made out of resin soaked cellulose sourced from recycled cardboard and newspapers. It’s lightweight, strong and at $5,000, relatively cheap. Its components are pre-fabricated in Germany and will be constructed on-site, adding the extra value of local job creation. Each house can sleep 8 and comes with a bathroom, veranda and kitchen which can be made open-air.

Looks like a great (and great looking) solution to the problem of adequate low cost housing. The only concerning thing is that a Swiss company owns the patent to the innovative materials used to build the house, and wouldn’t it be better to keep this world serving innovation open source and available for anyone to manufacture?

[via Treehugger & Gizmodo]