A five-storey residential building in the UK will soon let occupants rearrange their apartments at the push of a button, with rooms that expand, contract, or swap functions as needs change. This matters because most new mass-built homes are rigid structures that cannot adapt as families grow, age, or change. Homeowners currently face expensive, time-consuming renovations or must move entirely. The Global Home Pilot (GHPilot) is a pre-production, inhabited demonstrator that tests whether fully modular, reconfigurable homes can be built at scale for the mass housing market. If successful, the project could transform how homes are designed and built. The precision-engineered modules move around a central service core, allowing vertical or horizontal expansion and plug-in additions like nurseries or home offices. The developers claim these homes can be built 75% faster and 33% cheaper than conventional housing, with dramatically lower carbon emissions and better whole-life performance. The GHConnect technology platform also allows integration of these adaptable systems into third-party homes during construction. For a sector where housing supply has been frozen in time, this demonstrator aims to prove that adaptable, future-proof homes are viable for mass production.
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"New build mass housing developers have prevented the UK housing supply from freefall, however, the buildings created are inherently frozen in time. Although a buyer can be involved in the design process, once the house is signed-off they are on their own. As homeowners, they are suddenly expected to become building maintenance experts, responsible for mechanical and structural repairs. Updating and altering internal spaces requires sourcing quality trade skills (a significantly time-consuming process), and becoming construction experts, architects and interior designers; to understand the possibilities of how the building could be changed to meet their evolving needs. For many, at the extreme, moving can be easier than adjusting these rigid buildings. Global Home is our vision for the future of the adaptable, modular, smart home for the Mass House Building (MHB) market. We have **design engineered the world's first fully modular, re-configurable, digitally integrated home, suitable for mass production** and ready to plug-in to the smart cities and communities of the future. IUK demonstrator funding will scale up the single modular unit, GH1 proof of concept, enabling the design, development and construction of a 5 storey residential, digitally integrated, adaptable, modular lifetime residential development (GHPilot). The ground floor will be demonstration space and the remaining floors will house postgraduate/international students. **GHPilot will be a pre-production, inhabited, active building demonstrator** (TRL 9) that will become a showcase for future investors, orders and innovators, completing the product development lifecycle, establishing supply chains, production facilities. The precision engineered modular GHPilot is configurable and customisable to meet its user's needs and preferences. The home adapts to the user, rather than the user adapting to the home. GHPilot is designed to allow expansion vertically, horizontally and technologically. At the touch of a button, interior areas expand or contract through modules that move around a structural central core, from which the home's services are managed and distributed. **Novel future proof designs** will be built in to enable users to physically transform personal and social space to meet their changing needs through movable walls but also with additional plug in modules, i.e. nursery or entertainment spaces. GHPilot will **demonstrate a large-scale-viable MHB product and process** enabling homes to be built **75% faster, 33% cheaper with dramatically reduced carbon emissions and increased whole-life performance**. GHPilot will also showcase the GHConnect technology platform product, enabling integration of GH technology into third party homes at point of construction."
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