Barcelona warns it will not grant license to controversial capsule apartment project
A Barcelona company has announced that it is building an apartment that will house 15 people in tiny capsules spread over just 100 square meters, but city authorities have said they will never issue a business license for such an initiative. Haibu 4.0, the company behind the project, has drawn inspiration from the capsules used in some hotels in Japan, where clients sleep in pods that contain a bed and a TV set attached to the ceiling. Haibu means beehive in Japanese, and the company website says that people are social creatures who were meant to live in communities that help each other out, like bees in a hive. The company says the pods are not meant for tourists, but for longer stays by residents who cannot afford the soaring rents of the Catalan capital or who have long daily commutes to work from their regular residence. Haibu 4.0 has been running ads for weeks, offering rooms for €200 a month, and says it has received 500 applications already.
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