THEY weigh 14 tonnes, they’re made of concrete, are shaped like a dome and could help ease Victoria’s prison accommodation crisis.

An Albury architect has designed the alternative prison cells he says are cheaper and more durable than the “illogical” shipping containers.

His creation has attracted the attention of the Victorian government.

Minister for Corrections Edward O’Donohue told architect Paul Simpson his proposal was under “active consideration” after the department’s deputy commissioner Rod Wise inspected the design last month.

“He said ‘When I saw you offering a 100-year guarantee, I thought, this bloke is mad, but now that I look at them, that’s fair enough’,” Mr Simpson said of Mr Wise’s visit.

Converted shipping containers, costing $100,000 each, have been installed at the minimum security prisons Dhurringile and Beechworth to ease over-crowding.

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Mr Simpson, whose firm Simpson Architects has handled large-scale projects on the Border, branded the containers “illogical”.

“It’s imbued with salt, they have a very limited life. They’re three-millimetre steel, they’re really quite oppressive, they’re 2.45 metres high” he said.

“They’re heat packs ... so the cost of maintaining them will be vast.”

He said his “EnviroDome” modules, which he developed initially for remote housing, would save the government 25 per cent and would cost 10 per cent of the price of maintaining the shipping containers.

The modules weigh 14-tonnes, are three metres square in size, have a three-metre high roof and a floor made of concrete, are insulated and ventilated with two bunk beds, ensuite, kitchen and study area and can be trucked in their finished condition from Albury.

“The maintenance cost will be almost zero,” Mr Simpson said.

He said while the contract at Beechworth had been filled, he hoped to capitalise on the Premier’s promise that 2500 prison beds are still to be rolled out.

“We can’t provide that in one lump but we can gear up,” he said.

“We’ve got one mould that makes these shells and we could do three in a week working around the clock, but let’s say we get a request to produce 30, we’ll get another two moulds made.

He said he would be inviting Mr O’Donohue to inspect a fitted-out module in about a month.

The modules have already been converted to public toilets at Myrtleford’s Cundy Park and Stacey’s Bridge in the Nariel Valley.

He said they can be turned into cabins and granny flats and he also hoped to roll them out as remote housing.