Pipe dream of low-cost Hong Kong tube homes

Hong Kong’s notoriously expensive housing makes owning an affordable home a pipe dream for many residents.

Now a local architect has proposed a novel idea to help alleviate that problem: building stylish micro-apartments inside giant concrete drainage pipes.

James Law’s Opod Tube Housing is at the conceptual stage, but it has attracted attention as an innovative if untested way to deal with housing shortages.

At 100 square feet the tube houses are not that much smaller than Hong Kong’s infamous “cubicle homes” – older apartments subdivided into cramped and squalid living spaces – and roomier than other types of tenement housing.

The idea came to Mr Law when he spotted leftover storm sewer drain pipes at a construction site.