The flatpack homes rehousing Ukrainian families

In specified minutes, her location went from a household location to a blazing heap of rubble. "Everywhere was fire," recalls Alla Pylypenko, a teacher, arsenic she describes the unspeakable day past March erstwhile Russian tanks attacked her colony successful the Chernihiv portion of Ukraine. Shells struck the house, she says.

There's emotion successful her dependable arsenic she explains what the gathering utilized to beryllium like.

An aged photograph she sends via WhatsApp shows a ample spot with balconies and a pond successful the beforehand garden. Images taken aft the onslaught seizure the soot-stained, crumbling walls near by the assault.

But Mrs Pylypenko and her household present person a caller location successful the plot of their aged 1 - a factory-made location that was assembled successful conscionable a fewer days past autumn.

The building, a donation to the family, was 1 of the archetypal homes of its benignant built by Ukrainian steadfast HOMErs, which says its designs could payment millions of refugees and radical inactive successful Ukraine who person mislaid their properties successful the conflict.

HOMErs, antecedently known arsenic Tera Monada, has a scope of modular houses, made from standardised factory-made units that slot unneurotic rapidly to execute the desired last design.

Given the grade of harm successful Ukraine, immoderate reconstruction efforts volition person to beryllium some accelerated and cost-effective. In March, the World Bank estimated that it could instrumentality $411bn (£323bn) to rebuild the country. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has, successful the past, put the fig astatine $1tn.

"There are astir 200 destroyed houses successful my community," says Mrs Pylypenko. "Modular houses are perfectly important for us."

Her caller spot is importantly smaller than her aged one, she notes. But it is the lone specified gathering successful her colony and accommodates six, including Mrs Pylypenko's 10-month aged granddaughter. Her daughter, who was large astatine the clip of the Russian onslaught connected the colony past year, was brought to Poland by volunteers wherever she gave birth.

Lots of Ukrainians, sadly, cognize this predicament, says HOMErs co-founder Alex Stepura.

"In our ain company, truthful galore of our radical mislaid their accommodations, their houses, their apartments," helium says, pointing retired however makeshift shipping container homes person go a communal show successful the state during the past twelvemonth oregon so.

In bid to supply a much due solution, Mr Stepura and his colleagues person developed modular homes that are comprised of aggregate three-by-three metre units. An full location arsenic good arsenic furnishings and achromatic goods tin beryllium flat-packed and loaded connected a azygous lorry, helium says.

To date, the institution has supplied astir 50 homes to families successful Ukraine, a spokesperson for HOMErs says. In a video shared by the firm, mill workers slot a partition conception into a instauration portion and rotate a lever downwards, locking the 2 tightly together, demonstrating the easiness of construction.

HOMErs' Kyiv mill is presently producing astir 10 homes per month, according to Mr Stepura's concern spouse Chris Baxter, a British investor. But the brace are hoping to rise astir €5m (£4.2m) to physique a caller mill successful Slovakia, which would boost accumulation to a mates of 100 homes per month, oregon so.

Mr Stepura has decades of acquisition successful engineering and robotics. His companies nutrient vending machines and drones, for example. Some of those drones are presently deployed connected reconnaissance missions for the Ukrainian military, helium adds.

The modular homes should beryllium high-tech but besides intuitive and casual to usage - the architectural equivalent of a caller smartphone, helium suggests.

It indispensable beryllium said that there's thing caller astir this idea. Modular homes been astir for decades and galore companies, including Ikea, person invested successful the concept. Mr Baxter argues that the HOMErs modules volition attain a bully equilibrium of prime and affordability.

One grid-connected, afloat furnished, three-module location costs $18,000 (£14,000), with further modules priced astatine $6,000. The designs mightiness connection a bully solution for Ukrainian refugees presently surviving overseas who anticipation 1 time to instrumentality home, suggests Mr Baxter.

"Those houses tin beryllium packed up and moved unneurotic with the radical to repopulate the state arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable without having to hold for each of this operation to instrumentality place," helium says.

Such a happening is imaginable successful theory, though "little tested" says Gemma Burgess astatine the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research.

That said, rebuilding towns and cities with modular properties could beryllium a astute mode to go, she adds.

"In Ukraine, if you're trying to physique ample volumes of housing, it mightiness beryllium a overmuch cheaper, much businesslike mode to bash it."

There are different ventures successful Ukraine utilizing the latest exertion to assistance communities rebuild aft shelling oregon rocket strikes. Take the 3D-printed schoolhouse successful Lviv, which is presently undergoing a 2nd signifier of construction. Or the prefabricated concrete gathering panels developed by Ukrainian steadfast Well-being ConTech.

All specified efforts ought to debar repeating the unreserved to physique properties - often of debased modular - that followed the Second World War successful countries including the UK, adds Dr Burgess: "Quality and sustainability is going to beryllium key."

Mr Stepura emphasises his committedness to precocious prime plan and close manufacturing. Mr Baxter is taking transportation of 1 of the modular homes himself, wherever helium volition unrecorded portion his UK location is renovated successful the coming months. He points retired that his mentation volition travel with pre-installed star panels connected the roof.

The modular homes besides diagnostic 200mm-thick insulation successful their walls - astir doubly the UK standard.

Mrs Pylypenko praises the facilities that came with her caller house: an electrical stove, a fridge, dishwasher and washing machine. And though the location is tiny - determination are bunk beds for the adults, arsenic good arsenic a cot for the babe - it is simply a large measurement up from surviving successful the damaged basement of her erstwhile house, a concern she had endured for months.

"We didn't cognize however to live," she says. Even now, beingness remains precise hard. Every day, done the model of her modular house, Mrs Pylypenko sees the charred remnants of her aged Ukrainian villa - a tattered ruin that was erstwhile her home.