Vancouver designer hopes to tackle housing crisis with sought-after modular builds

The Vancouver founder of design startup SCHTAUSS Daniil Aron-Mokhov has designed and developed a modular, sustainable outdoor space. (Courtesy: Daniil Aron-Mokhov)

A Vancouver designer is making waves in the architectural world with an outdoor modular building created to address the city’s unrelenting housing crisis.

Daniil Aron-Mokhov, founder of design startup SCHTAUSS, has designed and developed a prefabricated, multifunctional space that serves as both office and garden shed.

Built in the backyard of his mum’s Kitsilano home, the timber Modular Shed Office features an indoor space accessible via three hinged hatchways, and a rooftop patio reachable via ladder. Crafted with sustainability in mind, the project utilised leftover materials from a previous home renovation, alongside locally sourced scraps from the local FabLab and organisations across Vancouver.

The 22-year-old, who studied economics at Queen's University in Kingston for two years before studying architecture in Spain’s Barcelona, said the piece has garnered attention from notable magazine publications and has already incited requests from homeowners across the province.

“There’s been a few people that have reached out to me, particularly in Squamish, who have asked to work with me and produce something similar for them,” he said.

The result of just four days of laser cutting and fabrication and two days of installation in the garden, Aron-Mokhov said the design is a quick, cheap, sustainable option that he hopes will be harnessed as a solution to Vancouver’s affordable housing deficit.

“There is quite an evident problem of housing shortage in Canada and the market is just so over-saturated with high end luxury buildings,” he said.

“There has been a lot of talk in North America about how we can densify cities, and, given that it is really expensive at the moment to add additional space to your house, something like this would hopefully help.”

Aron-Mokhov said he found a “loophole in the system” where, if a building is modular and falls under 15 square metres, it requires less paperwork to build as an addition to someone’s home.

“The future of architecture is the modular building,” he said.

“Utilizing these sheds as additional living or working spaces, whether it’s an office space or a kid’s playroom, are a much more cost-effective and efficient alternative to the usual, expensive home renovations that people do,” he said.

With the startup only a month old, and the Modular Shed Office its first official offering, Aron-Mokhov said there are still some design creases he hopes to iron out before he launches a large-scale project building modular designs.

In the near future, however, he plans to build and install “more shed spaces” in backyards across the province, alongside taking the designs to South America, where he hopes to help create affordable housing for remote communities.