Kanye West is building prefab housing inspired by Star Wars
By Newinhomes on Jul 12, 2019
It’s not every day we have a reason to write about Kanye West.
A recent cover story in Forbes broke the news that Kanye is working on a prefabricated housing project inspired by Luke Skywalker’s childhood home. Yes, Luke Skywalker. Not only is this post about Kanye...it’s also about Star Wars.
According to the article, Kanye envisions the prefab housing units being geared towards low-income uses and to combat homelessness, potentially sunken into the ground, with light filtering in through the top of the home.
“We stroll out into the chilly, starless night, and I follow him up a dirt path deeper into the woods for several minutes until he stops at a clearing and looks up, wordless,” writes Zack O’Malley Greenburg, senior editor of media & entertainment at Forbes. “There, with the hazy heft of something enormous and far away, stand a trio of structures that look like the skeletons of wooden spaceships. They’re the physical prototypes of his concept, each oblong and dozens of feet tall, and West leads me inside each one.”
This news broke shortly after prefab and modular housing made some small waves in Toronto. The City is currently working on a prefab modular housing initiative to address issues of homelessness.
"As a City, we are continually looking at new and innovative approaches to meet our City's housing needs for all residents and this modular housing pilot program will add an additional option to this effort," said Mayor John Tory. Maybe they would consider Kanye’s prefab designs?
When people think of prefab housing in North America, it’s mostly seen as a temporary form of housing, but it doesn’t have to be. Sidewalk Labs is proving that with their housing strategy for Sidewalk Toronto, which proposes mass timber designs and prefab construction.
“I also see a lot of potential in prefab housing,” writes Sam Reiss, President of New Home Buyers Network. “If the amount of red tape and delayed construction timelines are what’s contributing to soaring housing prices, then let’s build high quality prefab housing from mass timber that’s manufactured in Ontario. Create jobs, build more affordable housing, and do it all quicker.”
The Forbes article kind of skims over the prefab housing project and quickly shifts to Kanye’s creative efforts at Adidas, but we think it’s great for an artist and someone of Kanye’s influence to at least have some of their resources, time, attention, and money focused on finding housing solutions for those in need.
