I have never once thought when pulling into a parking garage, “This space could be the perfect structure for housing.” But how could I not have? It’s so simple yet also genius and a team of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) professors and students had the imagination to develop this brilliant idea called SCADpad.

As Christian Sottile, dean of the SCAD School of Building Arts, probes us to question, “We are returning to cities, building new cities and parking structures are not a building that we’ve turned our attention to as a preservation concern. But as these buildings reach the end of their lifecycle are there adaptive reuse strategies that we haven’t considered yet.”

I love that a group of students and professors looked at this structure with a different perspective and saw possibility – not to tear it down and create more waste in our landfills but to address a growing need for urban housing in an environmentally friendly manner.

SCADpad makes me hopeful that architects, historic preservationists and designers will take this micro housing concept back to every major city in the world and implement it in some form. I wish a SCADpad style structure would have been an available housing option in the early stages of my career in New York City; it would have given me an affordable opportunity to live and work in the same community instead of a two-hour commute on three different types of public transportation.

A SCAD source tells me to stay tuned for all the various components of this project, from furniture design to sustainability features, as it kicks off this spring.