Up In A Flash

Pre-constructed off-site and totally off the grid, this modular timber home in the Karoo is as beautiful as it is green

- Diane Wemyss

With climate change and rapid population growth, the work of Italian born, Brussels-trained architect Pietro Russo is beginning to look more and more like the way forward, yet it has taken almost a decade for his pioneering pod-style home designs and off-site pre-construction ideas to take off.

Pietro trained at I.S.A.C.F. (Institut Superieur d’Architecture Communicante Francaise) La Cambre in Brussels and did his thesis on township and social housing in Jo’burg in conjunction with Wits University. A job with an Arabian company brought him to Cape Town where he worked for a year before taking up a two year lectureship post at UCT’s School of Architecture.