Microflats may be solution to city housing shortages

The shortage of affordable accommodation for key workers and young professionals in London may be reaching crisis proportions but until now they have not been reduced to sleeping in shop windows.

From Monday a bank clerk and a market researcher will be setting up home in Oxford Street to publicise what a group of architects hopes will be the answer to the capital's housing problems.

The man and woman, chosen from more than 100 applicants, will each spend a week in a flat so small it can fit into a window display in Selfridges department store. Tiny flats in London are nothing new – it's not unknown for studios little bigger than a cupboard to sell for tens of thousands of pounds – but this "microflat" is compact for a cause. Its temporary occupants, from Southampton and Oxfordshire, want to move to London but have been daunted by the property prices. They have decided to live – similar to Big Brother – in full view of shoppers to promote a scheme to provide affordable, if cosy, housing.

The microflat was thought up by six architects and designers of the Piercy Conner practice when they found their own attempts to buy a home in central London were rendered increasingly futile by high prices.

The concept borrows from the tiny "pods" where Japanese businessmen have lived in Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Tower since the early 1970s, and from traditional yacht design, where every inch of space is put to good use. The microflats have a kitchen and living area, a bedroom with space for a king-size bed, a utility room with a sink, lavatory, shower and some storage space, and a small terrace or balcony. The flats have ceilings 2.8 metres (9ft 4in) high, which allows more natural light and space. They would be built in a factory, driven to the chosen site and then clipped together in whatever numbers and design suits the particular location.

The main point is that they would not be available to anyone. Once constructed the microflats would be offered only to first-time buyers earning less than £30,000.

They cost about £40,000 to build and would sell for between £60,000 and £90,000, far below London's typical house price of £200,000. Buyers would have to sign a covenant that would prevent them selling the flats at a much inflated price. Instead, once a struggling teacher, for example, had saved enough to move on to a bigger place, they would be obliged to sell the flat back to Piercy Conner, possibly making a small profit, and the architects would then resell it to another first-time buyer.

The practice came up with the idea in August, and the flat being assembled in Selfridges over the weekend is the first to exist outside of a computer-generated image. In the six months since the concept was launched, the architects have identified a site off Caledonian Road near King's Cross and have approached Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who has made finding affordable homes for key workers one of the main priorities of his administration. The first development would contain up to 40 flats over four storeys, with the ground level being made up of an office and café.

Richard Conner, one of the partners, said the architects had finance in place for their first scheme and now just needed to buy the land and gain planning permission. The flats, at 32 square metres, are the same size as the post-Second World War minimum standard for social housing. Mr Conner said the design meant they would feel more spacious. "We are trying to get more out of the area by clever design techniques, economy with the storage system and using space-saving techniques."

If an initial development in London is successful the practice hopes to expand the idea to other cities where prices in the central area are rocketing.