LIVING ON THE EDGE
The Smartpod House
The Smartpod house, as Weber has dubbed his innovative
design, is a product of the environment Weber works in. In
many cases, the sites are too steep or too expensive to modify to
enable a conventional house to be built. Weber likes to view his
Smartpods, which appear to protrude from rock faces as though
almost geological entities themselves, as working with rather
than against nature. "I do like steep sites and structure shaped
by the geology of the site they are on," he says. "I like structure to
appear to be an extension of nature."
It was this challenge that prompted Weber to develop his modular cantilevered house which, thanks to its much smaller foundation footprint, can be built on sites where conventional homes could not be erected economically. "The Smartpod home can be built anchored to the site by excavating just a small divot in the hillside rather than having to create a much larger pad to support the entire structure of a conventional house," he explains. Rather than building each house from the foundations up, Weber's houses are built in prefabricated components or pods. These are then trucked to the site and lowered into place by crane. Pod construction occurs at the same time as access, service provision and excavation works are carried out at the site of the house, cutting construction time.
The Smartpod has been designed with two different floor areas – 47 square metres and 67 square metres. The smaller pods measure 4.5 metres by nine metres long, with half the length cantilevered. The larger version, which weighs in at 16 tonnes, measures 4.5 metres by 13.5 metres, and has two-thirds or nine metres of the longer side suspended above the ground. The flexibility of the concept also means house shapes can vary, including stacking pods on top of each other.
