the $10,000 Home

The $10,000 Home is a design-research project that explores the potential of CNC-fabricated plywood to radically transform how we conceive, construct, and inhabit urban housing. Responding to Sydney’s growing housing crisis, this initiative proposes a new housing model that is cost-effective, sustainable, and prefabricated—reducing both construction time and material waste.

At the core of the proposal is a self-contained, single-person living pod, designed entirely from CNC-cut plywood sheets with interlocking joints. These joints eliminate the need for fasteners, adhesives, or heavy machinery. The pod is conceived as a spatial unit of minimum dignity—compact but complete, providing space for sleeping, working, cooking, and resting. Internally, each pod is finished with a tactile rhythm of modular wall panels and a grid ceiling, delivering both acoustic warmth and visual richness.

These pods are not isolated objects—they’re designed to stack into mid-rise timber towers. Each tower hosts multiple pods, suspended within a lightweight exoskeletal timber structure. This vertical assembly enables scalable density while maintaining modular flexibility. The towers can be rapidly assembled on underutilized sites or urban infill lots and disassembled or relocated when needed.