Mahindra Impressed by Man Who Built Home on Rickshaw
Businessman Anand Mahindra recently tweeted in praise of an architect who transformed an autorickshaw into a mobile home.
In the year 2020 DT Next newspaper published a report about an architect who converted an autorickshaw to a mobile home. Arun Prabhu NG, while studying architecture, realised that the small slum spaces in places like Chennai and Mumbai can be improved by better design. He designed a compact 6 ft x 6ft space into a portable and detachable housing that can accommodate an individual. The design has been planned in such a way that he has incorporated all necessary spaces like kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, toilet, foyer, terrace area and also additional space for a vendor to do sales. He used discarded materials like metal scrap that had been thrown away from the old bus bodies and demolished buildings. So the entire production cost has reduced a lot. The structure is fixed with just 6 bolts to the vehicle and this can be easily unscrewed and kept aside or can be fixed to any other vehicle.
Arun had said, “We generally focus on large scale architecture and not to small scale architecture. By developing a prototype of Solo 1, my intention was to explore temporary and portable housing concepts in India.” Recently a person named Massimo Canducci shared the pictures which showed a tiny house sitting on top of an auto rickshaw and tagged businessman Anand Mahindra. He also wrote, “Mr Prabhu built the "Solo 1" mobile home using ? 1 lakh.” Mr. Mahindra tweeted in praise of the architect who transformed an autorickshaw into a mobile home. Mr. Mahindra shared pics of the unique mobile home on Twitter, and wrote, “Arun did this to demonstrate the power of small spaces. But he was also on to a larger trend: a potential post-pandemic wanderlust & desire to be 'always mobile. I would like to ask if he'll design an even more ambitious space atop a Bolero pickup. Can someone connect us?” His tweet has racked up nearly 5,000 'likes' and hundreds of responses. While many praised the innovation, several others also shared Mr Prabhu's contact details with Anand Mahindra.
