Four KODAs will be heading to Hanover, Germany this summer! We’ve signed a project with the innovative real estate company hanova of the German city of Hanover. Hanova’s rental housing innovation in the form of KODAs will be installed and open for use in Summer 2021.
“The population of the world’s cities is growing fast – faster, in many cases, than the cities themselves. In some urban areas, traditional ways of construction are failing to keep pace with demand for new homes, offices and infrastructure,” wrote the Economist back in 2016. New approaches to architectural design and construction are needed, and this need is what drives KODA’s design as a flexible, prefab turnkey house.
The combination of large-scale unmet demand for housing and shortage of skilled workers makes Germany’s larger cities an attractive market for KODA. According to the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning, Germany will require about 350,000 new housing units in 2021.
An agreement between hanova and Kodasema was signed in February, after a mere six month process of permitting, configuration and contracting – which means that within just one year from the initial contact between the companies, four KODAs will be installed in district Linden Süd, Hanover in Summer 2021, ready for people to move in.
This is a great example for many municipalities in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, of how to put cities’ undeveloped land to good use with movable KODAs, fast. “This is a remarkable example of international private-municipal collaboration whilst addressing the pressing issue of housing shortage in an innovative and sustainable way. We believe this will lead to many even larger scale KODA Community housing projects across European cities,” said Birgit Linnamäe, CEO of Kodasema. She went on to add: “This takes us back to the early days of Kodasema in 2013, where scalable, movable and quick projects – by the people for the people – were in mind of our founders.”
„As a municipal real estate company, we see it as our responsibility to actively shape urban development and, as a pioneer, to set new residential impulses. Tiny houses – the attitude to life and the associated sufficiency – are trendy. Our smartly equipped KODA micro houses offer space for the essentials in minimal space, have a green environment and are centrally located“, said Karsten Klaus head of hanova, which is the largest housing association in Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony and he adds: “Tiny houses are an attractive option for urban redensification.”
According to the article by Demos Helsinki, a think tank, published in the Estonian Architectural Review (Winter 2021), cities can show direction and lead the ecosystem via procurement and legislative power to create a smart living environment. Likewise, we at Kodasema humbly suggest, when cities take the lead in creating people-centric environment, simplifying permitting for micro homes and communities, a greater number of people will be happier and healthier, when being surrounded by a smart community. We are glad to see that hanova is setting an excellent example.
Hanova has stood for ecologically and socially sustainable urban development since 1927 and with KODAs on site, they continue to do so in the future. Hanova and Kodasema are hoping for follow-up projects to be realized soon after the first batch of KODAs is delivered.
Read more on hanova’s website www.tiny.hanova.de and in Bild.