Hope for a Home

Billionbricks co-founder Prasoon Kumar spent the last four years alleviating the housing problems of developing metropolises. Now he hopes to inspire the next generation to do the same, writes Grace Ma

n his 13 years as an architect and urban planner, Prasoon Kumar witnessed the growing prosperity of Asian cities, and the concurrent lack of intelligent urban planning to improve the quality of life of the citizens in these countries. Dissatisfied with seeing more talk than practical action, he co-founded non-profit design and innovation studio billionbricks in 2013 with the sole focus of making a tangible impact in the area of housing the homeless. Prasoon, who was born in India and is currently based in Singapore, says, “Architects and urban designers like myself were building more infrastructure and designing better buildings, spaces and facilities for city dwellers, but when you look at the areas of traffic, quality of health, safety, education and housing, these problems are getting bigger and bigger. So I thought: why can’t we build better cities? Are we really thinking of the solutions?” Today, billionbricks works with communities, non-governmental organisations and governments to provide high-quality scalable shelters and infrastructure solutions. One of its most innovative projects is weatherhyde, an insulated all-weather tent that can be installed in 15min without tools or anchoring, and can shelter up to five people, making it accessible to the single mother or the family living on the streets. Now, it is working on powerhyde, the world’s first solar powered home for the homeless. In addition to producing sufficient solar energy for its owners’ needs, it also generates excess energy that can be sold to finance the house.