MIT's $1,000 House Challenge Yields Results 203
An anonymous reader writes "MIT's $1k House Project is an extraordinary challenge to provide safe and healthy homes for the world's burgeoning population. The Pinwheel House (PDF), a student project which helped serve as a catalyst for the challenge, has been completed in China by architect Ying chee Chui. Students have come up with a dozen or so designs to meet the challenge and improve living conditions for not just emerging economies but larger nations as well."
Mit is the problem, not the solution (Score:2)
MIT epitomises the competitive, winner-takes-it-all, might-makes-right environment which is keeping half the world in poverty. Every dominant man starts forming his network at one of the elite universities, supporting research in collusion with exploitative business. When you've accepted that offer, you've already asked to be part of the system - to pretend to do something against it is ineffective hypocrisy.
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What's your solution ?
Re:Mit is the problem, not the solution (Score:4, Interesting)
For people who
(i) are sufficiently intelligent to enter MIT (or similar); but
(ii) are interested in application of technology to benevolent causes rather than application of technology to their bank account
to refuse an acceptance or to leave the university and instead do what they believe is right on their own?
If you want to force any organisation to change its behaviour, as any fule kno, you withold labour. Top universities exist on the reputation of a tiny minority of dedicated academics, but their business is processing journeymen who either stop at graduation or do a small amount of research work to launch them into a high-paying commercial job.
To take an example, the director of my MSc programme resigned in angry disgust at the increasing commercialisation of higher education but most academics are too scared to leave the security of their tenure (or quasi-tenure). His action encouraged me as a student to take a look at politics in the university and higher education in general, and I aborted my research plans out of principle. Interestingly, my cousin at the LSE did the same as a final year PhD student.
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Weird. Ten years ago I called universities disgusting money-grubbing cults that turn out brain-washed debt slaves. I was ridiculed.
That's because that is ridiculous.
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If you *really* want to make money in this day and age, take an apprenticeship for a skilled trade.
Seriously.
Don't believe me, ask the 24-year old who lives next-door to me, and is making $80k/year as an electrician.
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Moral of the story: If you're young and still in HS, and taking on at least
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You sound like a sad little hippie who still has a chip on his shoulder because some jocks picked on him a decade or two prior.
What is wrong with competition?
And you propose a losers-distribute-winnings-equally environment?
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What is wrong with competition?
Competition isn't inherently bad, but competition can be pointless and even a lot less useful than competition.
In general competition can be fun, it can be a challenge. But, in today's world we're expected to always compete whether we want to or not, all day every day you're expected to constantly try to be better than the other guy (or girl). We're living in a world where "Good enough" for many people means you're first on the chopping block when the next round of layoffs starts. Where "Good enough" just i
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"...even a lot less useful than cooperation."
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But, in today's world we're expected to always compete whether we want to or not
This has been a fact of life since the first proto-cells started eating each other about 4Gyrs ago, the very reason cooperation evolved in the first place was it imparted a competitive advantage. You and I may not like relentless competition, but there's fuck all we can do about the fundamental facts of life.
Re:Mit is the problem, not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point. What I meant was that when compared to say, my parents' generation, my generation clearly has to compete on a different level. When I was out of work straight after college my father was baffled by this, when he was that age jobs could be had by just going to a company you thought looked fun to work for and asking them for a job. And in the workplace these days the level of performance expected by each employee is higher (at least in a lot of white-collar jobs). Basically our (western) society has become a lot more competitive and for the average person I just don't think the everyday gains outweigh the cost.
Now yes, if you go back to the 19th century and the wave of industrialization that swept through the world things were worse, the point is that we took a few steps forward and then we started taking steps backwards again.
Well... (Score:2)
You're missing the point. What I meant was that when compared to say, my parents' generation, my generation clearly has to compete on a different level.
The world did get a lot smaller in the meantime, while the number of competitors surged to twice what the entire population of the world was back then.
That's what happens when former ideological enemies become competitors - particularly when the guiding philosophy of the winning side is that "it's a dog-eat-dog world".
Your parents probably had to "compete" with only the local population of your state, or even only the local population of your town.
You, me, the next generation... we now have a whole world to
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Re:Mit is the problem, not the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
You sound like a sad little hippie who still has a chip on his shoulder because some jocks picked on him a decade or two prior.
Where I went to school, "jocks" wouldn't have passed the entrance exam. I dislike my elite past, but I'm not going to deny it.
What is wrong with competition?
What is right with competition? There are times when it seems to work but there is nothing inherently good about it.
And you propose a losers-distribute-winnings-equally environment?
You're paying no attention. I propose that the intelligent act out of a desire to achieve good things in their discipline rather than to profit. There are 7 billion people in the world - more than enough who are both clever and benevolent. We simply have no need of the "gr8 people like me need $$$ incentive to support you!" mantra any more - it's a more outdated idea than RIAA, which is why certain groups are trying so hard to cling on to it.
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MIT epitomises the competitive, winner-takes-it-all, might-makes-right environment which is keeping half the world in poverty.
I have my doubts that "competitive" is the problem. If you ask people to participate in improving something, some will join for the sake of it, for some greater cause, but only if they perceive the goal to be of equal benefit to everyone. If instead the goal is considered profitable for a corporation or person, they will demand a prize or refuse to participate even on a winner-takes-it-all basis and ask for renumeration whatever the outcome / the quality of their contribution. Conclusion? Most goals we are
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> When you've accepted that offer, you've already asked to be part of the system
My MIT diploma? I threw it on the ground!
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MIT epitomises the competitive, winner-takes-it-all, might-makes-right environment which is keeping half the world in poverty. Every dominant man starts forming his network at one of the elite universities, supporting research in collusion with exploitative business. When you've accepted that offer, you've already asked to be part of the system - to pretend to do something against it is ineffective hypocrisy.
Actually, students at MIT end up there because they are obsessed with some aspect of science or engineering and are driven to seek out and solve problems, like this housing exercise. The problems may be profound or trivial or even silly (how to get a fake police car up on the dome, for example), but they are all just problems crying out to be solved.
If these students had actually put some thought into getting rich by exploiting the world, they would have applied instead to Harvard, networked with the pre
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MIT is not a university -- or at least they didn't claim to be when I went there. As far as it being elite, so far as I know you can't get in by being rich. I don't know their stance on "legacy" admissions, but it really is a non-issue because the bigger problem is *staying* in. At MIT they cover what would be two semesters of calculus in most places in under a semester. And as far as I can see there is no "old boy's network" for MIT alumni, although the institute would probably like to see that happen.
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How many houses for the developing world have you designed and published for the world.
Forget it, you have to be a troll, can somebody so ignorant exist otherwise?
Haven't seen MIT's Appropriate Technology lab? (Score:2)
There is a program at MIT where the students develop low tech and appropriate technology for the developing world. I guess that teaching locals to make their own biochar that burns cleaner than wood or cow dung and will reduce air pollution inside people's homes so they don't die of lung cancer is an evil plot to support the establishment?
Same goes for water purification systems, grain mills I guess too?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/gonzo/4273674 [popularmechanics.com]
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/sm [mit.edu]
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Especially, what alternative system do you propose that provides an educational and scientific environment that is on par with or at least not substantially worse than that at the MIT?
I'll have a stab at this.
At a very basic level, MIT is a series of houses filled with smart people. Maybe also some special equipment is required. If so, we might have to find for example miners and truck drivers and people who know how to build the machines that can build that specialist equipment, unless those can be found in existence all ready.
There is nothing magic about the free market and capitalism. What it can conjure up by means of millions of entrepreneurs poking in the dark to see what will stic
Solution? Talk to those you are trying to "help" (Score:5, Insightful)
The writers created a competition, asking students, architects and businesses to compete to design the best prototype for a $300 house (their original sketch was of a one-room prefabricated shed, equipped with solar panels, water filters and a tablet computer). The winner will be announced this month. But one expert has been left out of the competition, even though her input would have saved much time and effort for those involved in conceiving the house: the person who is supposed to live in it [in Mumbai] We recently showed around a group of Dartmouth students involved in the project who are hoping to get a better grasp of their market. They had imagined a ready-made constituency of slum-dwellers eager to buy a cheap house that would necessarily be better than the shacks they’d built themselves. But the students found that the reality here is far more complex than their business plan suggested. To start with, space is scarce. There is almost no room for new construction or ready-made houses. Most residents are renters, paying $20 to $100 a month for small apartments. Those who own houses have far more equity in them than $300 — a typical home is worth at least $3,000. Many families have owned their houses for two or three generations, upgrading them as their incomes increase. With additions, these homes become what we call “tool houses,” acting as workshops, manufacturing units, warehouses and shops. They facilitate trade and production, and allow homeowners to improve their living standards over time. None of this would be possible with a $300 house, which would have to be as standardized as possible to keep costs low. No number of add-ons would be able to match the flexibility of need-based construction. In addition, construction is an important industry in neighborhoods like Dharavi. Much of the economy consists of hardware shops, carpenters, plumbers, concrete makers, masons, even real-estate agents. Importing pre-fabricated homes would put many people out of business, undercutting the very population the $300 house is intended to help. Worst of all, companies involved in producing the house may end up supporting the clearance and demolition of well-established neighborhoods to make room for it. The resulting resettlement colonies, which are multiplying at the edges of cities like Delhi and Bangalore, may at first glance look like ideal markets for the new houses, but the dislocation destroys businesses and communities.
A recent (PBS-affilliated POV) film, Good Fortune [pbs.org] , expands further on the damage that can be done via good intentions when it comes to rehousing folks.
... it wasn't something they would have wanted. I helped vaccinate kids, which was something they wanted, and everyone won.
Many economists, journalists, physicians, and so forth have written extensively about the aid industry, and the White/Educated/Western/Elite-knows-best mentality. I certainly am no exception — I moved to Ghana with notions of making solar lights in my spare time, so that persons without grid-access could see at night, only to come to understand that this was a product that most people in the place I was living would have little interest in. It didn't matter that I'd spent months figuring out how to cram solar panels and LEDs into wire-bale jars, media blast them with garnet to diffuse the light better, and so on
For some more literature on this sort of thing, I'd recommend William Easterly's
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The problem is not $100 rents, or even $1000 rents; the problem is that some can afford such rents, and some cannot.
Interesting. From that angle the $1000 houses start to look like homeless shelters or subsidized housing. (If people can't afford housing, then *obviously* the solution is to lower the price they pay.) In this case, the goal is to actually drop the cost rather than make up the difference between what people can pay and what housing actually costs. That's fine and good, but it doesn't get to the root cause.
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Thanks for your thoughts. I've also lived in a poor country (Ecuador) and concur with everything you said.
Re:Solution? Talk to those you are trying to "help (Score:4, Interesting)
Ghana is not nearly as bad off as many other sub-Saharan African countries, and yet still there is much poverty. People living in the region (their equiv. of a state/county) where I used to reside are finding themselves pushed out of their houses as rents rise from $25-40/month to $100 or more per month due to an influx of oil contractors (now that Ghana has offshore oil pumping as of 2011). The problem is not $100 rents, or even $1000 rents; the problem is that some can afford such rents, and some cannot. In short, the problem is inequality. I am not so naïve as to expect the world will be perfectly fair, but surely we can strive for some basic assurances for all humans — adequate food, water, medical care, social productivity, and basic economic security.
Excellent post. But I would like to point out that if I can build the $1000 house in Ghana for $5000 and rent it out for $40 a month, I am getting a 9.6% annual return on my investment. That is a great return these days. I wouldn't claim to know how to solve the problems of inequality, but a stable home at what appears to be an affordable rental rate is surely a good start. Why not start a benevolent landlord NGO that matches capital looking for a good home with residents looking for a good home?
Not in the US... (Score:5, Interesting)
This wouldn't fly in the US.
Some construction union would intervene claiming substandard construction or what-not, code violations etc, etc just to protect their jobs.
The pipe-fitters unions did the same thing when PVC piping came out--they lobbied for code changes that required copper tubing, changes that ruled out Joe-Homeowner doing the work himself. Most building codes make it very hard for the do-it-your-selfers, sometimes requiring them to actually get a contractors license. There is no reason for this if the work passes inspection--it exists simply to protect the jobs of people that need to get with the times, adapt and get on with their lives rather then holding back the rest of humanity.
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Some jurisdictions have had their codes changed to support houses made from materials you might not expect -- hay bales, recycled tires, etc. Many areas might not, but it's worth talking to your local people to find out if you could do something like this. It might just pan out.
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Nor in Sweden. I don't know about the specific regulations here, but just looking around, it is clear that one can't live in just any old shack over here.
The standard of living doesn't start with a shack. It starts with a reasonably nice apartment (although in recent years the bourgeoisie have been laxing the rules for renovation). If, on a scale from 0 to 10 in standard of living 0 is the pavement, 1 is a shack and 10 is a castle, over here you get an apartment of standard 5 or thereabouts. If not, you're
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Well, I think the housing situation here in Sweden would improve a lot if the rules were a bit more relaxed. These days even if you do all the work you can yourself, call in favors from friends and all that you're still unlikely to get away with building a small single-household home for less than SEK 1,500,000.
Hell, brand new studio apartments regularly cost SEK 5,500+ to rent (even though they're in less attractive neighborhoods).
I would love to be able to build my own house but with the prices these days
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Yes, I think I agree at least a bit. But it should not be let out of hand so that "slum lords" (to the extent that they exist in Sweden) can let their houses decay even more while still not lowering rent. I guess those regulations should be easy enough to keep separate. No cockroaches and mildew is acceptable for the renters, for example.
And while I like the nice standards for living conditions, homeless people should be given sub-standard barracks to dwell in until proper apartments are available, I think.
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(Disclaimer: I'm not a conspiracy theorist, nut.)
If you feel the need to make such a disclaimer in your sig, I'd say you should probably try to figure out why people keep thinking you are one.
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This wouldn't fly in the US.
Neither would a job picking crops, but that doesn't make picking crops a bad idea.
Rosen Hotels Haiti house project (Score:3)
Harris Rosen from here in Orlando (owner of a huge hotel chain) was trying to start a project to create $5,000 homes for victims of the Haitian earthquake. This story reminded me of that (mostly because I wanted to double check how much they thought they could build each house for).
Link. [rosenhotels.com]
What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
The design in the PDF broke most of the build cheap rules. Things like if there's a kitchen and bathroom you put them back to back to share plumbing and drains saving on pipe. If there's no traditional kitchen or bathroom then why call them out in the plans as if they aren't included? There's options like Lorena Stoves that are basically built out of sand and clay so other than metal exhaust pipes and burner covers they require little money. Unless you are building what amounts to a shack basic plumbing and
Not for colder climes (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand that the project was formed with the developing world in mind, but I think that the concept is worth pursuing in the developed world as well.
The trouble is that all of the concepts that I read about sounded like ideas for a cabana on the beach. While that may work in spots where temps stay moderate year round, the rest of us could never make that work. Also, most of the ideas I read about sounded pretty light on engineering and heavier on design (architecture).
I'd like to see this project expanded into something resembling the next generation of manufactured/modular homes. We're in sore need of reasonably priced structures that are within the realm of an average person's abilities that retain style and form beyond an ugly box.
I agree that the developing world needs cheap ways to house their citizenry, but let's not forget to solve some of the problems that we still face here at home (in the US).
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The hay bale house had a pretty large thermal mass,it looked like. I've read about them before, and they're pretty interesting. They might be more workable in a colder climate.
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Actually no,
Yes, straw bales CAN be used as infill, but, it is not the way a real straw home is done.
You build the walls by stacking the bales, compress them a bit - then coat the bales on both sides with mud, shotcrete or whatever. They are very strong, have some thermal mass, and because of the great thickness they have a good R value
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There is the Tumbleweed House Company [tumbleweedhouses.com], they sell blue prints for _small_ houses. Not exactly the same as targeting price, but I'm sure there's a lot of overlap.
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For a more general climate capable house, there's a book written by a guy in the 70's about underground housing.
He's got a site: Underground Housing [undergroundhousing.com]. The book was for a place he built for $50.
Now, it didn't have a bathroom or running water, he already owned the land, he got scrap lumber for free from a lumber mill, he did all the work by hand, and his land is heavily wooded (it was built in Idaho, I think) so he could cut logs for timber frame supports, but it's still a viable concept for cheap housing.
The
how much are they now? (Score:2)
Also, surely cinder-block housing is around the same price as this house, which if you read the article, cost a lot more than $1000.
Compared to some UK houses its luxurious (Score:4, Informative)
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"Some of the houses in the UK barely have room for the bed."
I remember reading another article on the same subject (no reference--sorry) and there was a comments section after the article. Someone had posted that one of the development companies building these mini-me housing tracts was also building nearby self-serve storage rental facilities. They sell you a tiny flat...and rent you the space to store your stuff.
A mortgage AND rent, from one sale--amazing.
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The problem is that the UK advertises houses in terms of the number of bedrooms, rather than the floor area. If you look at an estate agent's web site, you'll see that prices are more or less broken down into 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-bedroom properties, with only a little bit of overlap between them. When I was looking for somewhere to buy, I found that a lot of old houses had had partition walls installed in the bedrooms so that one reasonable-sized bedroom became two small rooms. And, weirdly, this increases
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If you're buying a property and only really need 1 bedroom then of course you can consider whatever you want. Most people buying want/need more than th
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If I want three seperate places to sleep in my property then it makes very little difference how big the rooms are in a 2 bedroom property, I'm still missing a room.
Partition walls are not particularly difficult to install. Certainly not compared to the overall cost of the house. The one thing you can't get more of easily is total space, so that's a better primary measure of the value of a house.
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But the real peasant-killer is... (Score:2)
... where to put the damned thing that won't result in demands to forfeit one's firstborn. For fuck's sake, if one is truly desperate one could live in a tent with a price tag far less than a thousand dollars, but who's gonna let you squat on THEIR land for free with your inexpensive tent? That's right: NO ONE. The people who own land in excess of their need for personal space own it for one reason only, and the reason ain't philanthropic nor egalitarian.
Land has always been and will always be the class
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These are developing world housing structures, what makes you think they have developed world metropolitan land prices?
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There are complete houses with land selling for $5000
Which is the same as these, no plumbing or electrical wiring. At least, not any longer.
Here in mexico if you squat somewhere for 5 years it's yours.
That is true here in the U.S. too. However, you have to notify the State Housing Authorities that your are intending to improve the land at the time you move onto the land so they can check to see if anyone else is claiming ownership. Few people know about abandonment laws.
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So really i guess US'ians don't really have anything to complain about then?
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You forgot, "Now get off my lawn"! Literally.
The devil is always in the details (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a cute student project, but most would be considered "seasonal" shelter in even basic developed countries. I applaud the creativity, especially of the pinwheel house. Other houses sounded a bit more like a scavenger hunt that could have been done by any 5th year studio student in US architectural schools.
I would certainly hope that, given an entire year of studio work, there is more to the final product than the marketing brochure that came out of the pinwheel house. Part of the practice of architecture (which these students, we presume, would like to eventually be) is making buildings which are buildable. That means detailed drawings of each part which is not OTS hardware - but I see nothing. Does the robotics team get to draw a picture of a walking robot, or do they have to actually do piece drawings and wiring diagrams to actually build the robot?
To be fair, with skilled assembly, it is certainly better than most slum housing - but without skilled labor it may not be much better. None of the designs, save possibly the concrete roof, could be considered water tight for any length of time as initially reviewed, and few appear to have any chance of surviving a 50 year environmental event, much less protecting the occupants. I guess if they're cheap to build (just 6 years of the average 3rd world persons salary, by the website's count), you could see them as disposable and just build them again after each typhoon or earthquake.
From one of the linked sites:
"MIT 1K House is partnering with Skanska and Next Phase Studios to construct three exhibit 1K House prototypes in on MIT campus in Cambridge, MA. The project is moving forward, and the goal is to construct the prototypes by MIT Commencement on June 4, 2010. "
What I want to know it - if Skanska supposedly built 3 of these prototypes on the MIT campus in 2010, how much did it cost? I didn't see pictures, so I presume that the Skanska bid came in somewhere north of $3000 (or even the $6000 estimate for Philippines construction). IT doesn't appear that any of these houses has actually ever been built.
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Perhaps you've never been to developing countries? This is a palace compared to some of the shacks here in mexico, even in the mountains where there's snow and water freezes. A large part of the country has no indoor heating maki.g nights here in the mountains colder than winters in canada.
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But in the USA.... (Score:2)
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ [tumbleweedhouses.com]
This is the trick to get around the obtuse American building laws. Make it a trailer. Still a lot more than $1000.00 if you go nuts, but you could build one for around that price if you were good with scavenging and built it yourself.
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Better the obtuse American building laws than the straight forward Hammurabi building laws.
I am certain that it will work (Score:2)
So let's say you go to haiti, and offer these to the government where they can spend money to help rebuild their houses..the problem is once all the houses are rebuilt, you are left with a sh*t load of these lying around....unless they were to evolve it further, and allow connections between multiple houses, making them bigger and one unit....that would then let some of the people just use these full time instead of rebuilding their houses, in a country that cant afford anything right now.
No plumbing or Electric (Score:2)
This doesn't take into account the plumbing, or the electrical wiring. Are they not considered esential?
Don't forget about the Open Source alternatives (Score:2)
There's the Hexayurt Project [hexayurt.com], which is basically an updated geodesic dome and can be built up to 450 square feet for each module [morganengel.com] using only hand tools and a screw gun and the Wikihouse [wikihouse.cc] which is a fablab style design which relies on a router.
A typical deployment for a family home would be three hexayurts made out of polyiso foam and then sprayed with ferrocement. Cost is probably around $1500 for that approach, but that's first-world costs. With hand-plaster rather than sprayed ferrocement, I think a develop
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Where in the developing world is land $100,000 for a .25 acre lot?
And even if it was? $101,000 is a lot more affordable than $300,000.
And about that link. A link to a press release. With a link to a stupid splash page. With a link that finally goes to project?
Some of the desigs are intriguing to me. Not sure how they will hold up in some parts of the world.
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Re:What is the point (Score:5, Interesting)
As a result the Chinese government right now is trying to find ways to make rural living more palatable to young people so that they will stay in the countryside instead of moving to the city. Affordable, comfortable housing could go a long way towards that goal.
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The South East UK is not the developing world, though you wouldn't know it from the plumbing ;)
These designs are for rural China, India & Africa.
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What is the point of a $1k house when land costs at least 100x that amount?
Perhaps you don't need to build your $1k house downtown in a big city?
Most land costs far, far less than that. There's lots of land available in Texas (to pick the state I live in) where it's around $200-$300/acre, and an acre is enough to put a few houses on. Granted, most of this land isn't terribly desirable, but getting a 1/3rd acre plot that's not too far from a city and not too bad for $1000 ought to be doable.
House plus site, services, foundation, etc. (Score:2)
What is the point of a $1k house when land costs at least 100x that amount?
There's lots of land available in Texas (to pick the state I live in) where it's around $200-$300/acre, and an acre is enough to put a few houses on. Granted, most of this land isn't terribly desirable, but getting a 1/3rd acre plot that's not too far from a city and not too bad for $1000 ought to be doable.
Then there's the cost of getting services to your chosen site. It costs a bit to get electricity, water, and sewerage to a building site, or to provide a drilled well and septic system in a site that's too remote for municipal services. And then there's the cost of preparing the site for the structure. In much of the world the foundation would need to be much more robust (possibly with drainage, insulation, etc.) than the bare-bones arrangement presented.
This is not to denigrate the concept of an inexpen
Re:House plus site, services, foundation, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Then there's the cost of getting services to your chosen site. It costs a bit to get electricity, water, and sewerage to a building site, or to provide a drilled well and septic system in a site that's too remote for municipal services."
Mostly due to corrupt laws. Yes a pit Privy can be done properly, but a simple septic leech field is not that hard to engineer and build. Electricity is easy enough to do with very low cost scavenged parts to make wind power and heating can also be done simply by making the place solar efficient.. in Texas you really dont need heat just insulation and a central fireplace for the 2 days a year it drops below 60.
LAW states you must have X outlets per room, and XX amp of electrical service in the house. Hell they even dictate the number of Cable TV outlets required nowdays.
A 500SQ foot pinwheel home is large enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably. If you are not the typical american slob you can get away with a pair of $200.00 Harbor Freight Solar panel kits and a couple of deep cycle batteries for electricity to give you lighting for the entire home and a couple of outside lights, and if you are lucky you can charge that OLPC laptop that is used for the rich kids. if your well is properly sized you can run it also off of the solar+battery system. a propane tank outside will supply cooking, heat for home and water.
Very comfortable and sustainable.
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LAW states you must have X outlets per room, and XX amp of electrical service in the house. Hell they even dictate the number of Cable TV outlets required nowdays.
A 500SQ foot pinwheel home is large enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably. If you are not the typical american slob you can get away with a pair of $200.00 Harbor Freight Solar panel kits and a couple of deep cycle batteries for electricity to give you lighting for the entire home and a couple of outside lights, and if you are lucky you can charge that OLPC laptop that is used for the rich kids. if your well is properly sized you can run it also off of the solar+battery system. a propane tank outside will supply cooking, heat for home and water.
Most of that is due to municipalities getting tired of responding to fires, people dieing, etc because of idiots with bad electrical systems, cords running across doorways and who knows how many other possible dangerous scenarios. You have a fairly low user ID, so obviously you could build a good and cheap and safe shack, but your neighbor is a different story altogether.
Regardless, these house designs are really quite modular so adding a conduit and a wall outlet to every panel (in the same place on each
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But we would rather that they live in cardboard boxes under overpasses where they can be hassled by police to "move along" at 3am.
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Five hundred square feet? Are you mad? Do you have any idea how LITTLE space 500 square feet is? That's a large studio apartment. There's room for a family of four, sure... room for their beds and NOTHING else.
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Propane isn't "sustainable".
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They're not doing it just to oppress you.
No, they're also doing it to make themselves rich through inspection fees.
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The county inspection office isn't getting rich off of it. But there is a huge problem with the cost of regulations on the minimum quality of housing in a society where a significant fraction of the poor can not afford to meet those regulations. I know my parents would be perfectly happy to live in a 200sq ft shack if they were allowed to build one.
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Then there's the cost of getting services to your chosen site. It costs a bit to get electricity, water, and sewerage to a building site, or to provide a drilled well and septic system in a site that's too remote for municipal services. And then there's the cost of preparing the site for the structure. In much of the world the foundation would need to be much more robust (possibly with drainage, insulation, etc.) than the bare-bones arrangement presented.
This is not to denigrate the concept of an inexpensive functional structure, which is good, but to point out that the cost of making a habitable house involves more than the headline cost of the structure itself.
Instead of doing one house, what if a developer were to build a subdivision of these houses. The infrastructure (electricity, water, sewer, phone, cable) should be a lot cheaper per house. I bet you could sell these for at least $20-30k and make a tidy profit. Depending on the subdivision amenities, and who you market it to, you could probably get more.
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Composting toilets. way cheaper than a sewage hookup and you get free compost for your fields. Reed bed to filter grey water and you get material for furniture and basket construction. Rain catchement with artificial pond for overflow. Way cheaper that a water hookup, and with bamboo sand bio-filters you get clean drinking water all year round as well as a place to farm fish. Solar ovens and driers and rocket stoves built out of compressed earth. Bamboo perimeter give
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Bonus points if you buld it so it automatically empties into a biodigester. Though if you go that route might as well get some pigs and build a seperate chute with a grate over it that you can teach the pigs to use for defecating to provide the buik of material for the digester and then you'll get usable energy out of it as well.
People really need to star
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Maybe in America. Anywhere decent in Europe where you can get planning permission to build a house is going to be at least £100k. We don't have any unused land.
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Well a lot of land in Europe is locked up in government owned land.
Same thing is happening here in the US with the government locking down
millions of acres.
Then lumber and mining companies get sweetheart deals to use the land.
There are also some large land holders in Europe and the US that have
large amounts of land locked up.
Here in the US Ted Turner is our largest land holder.
In Mexico the billionaire telecom pirate Slim holds the most land.
It is the same deal in Europe, the gluttonous who can never get en
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people need greenspace. it's good for the psyche. if you want to live in high density housing, then move into an apartment complex where the number of residences per acre they can fit is limited only by how high they can build (in some cities, we're talking thousands of residences per acre). If you have the money, and don't mind the commute to the city center, then you should be within your rights to buy up a plot of land and put up low density housing.
what should be illegal is tearing down old growth fores
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Yeah, that pinwheel design is great--scales nicely from 7 to 200 bedrooms, short paths from the beds to the dining hall, and you can get a tremendous number of positive thoughts just by sticking a platinum statute beside the main stairway.
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Does anyone have a link to this Pinwheel design house? I'm not as up on my modern architecture as I should be I guess. Wikipedia is surprisingly unhelpful
Sure, here [mit.edu] you go.
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Yea, but then you could have problems controlling traffic and it can be a pain to seal the whole thing off in case of a goblin invasion or digging to deep.
First off... It's a $5,925 house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is a funny way of writing $1000.
Second, that is slightly over a $1.5k more than the Chinese per capita GDP of about $4,382.
Compared to the average US per capita GDP that is about as much as a $60k house.
Do I really need to comment that?
And all that is before even getting a building permit.
Which is often the greatest single expense when building a house in the third world and other "growing democracies" due to inefficiencies of the bureaucracy and the built-in culture of bribes and corruption.
Now... as this is apparently hailed as a "low-cost home for the poor", let's go see what the really poor make.
You know, countries where that imaginary $1000 is approximately around or over the per capita GDP. [wikipedia.org]
Even at a $1000 per house an average Nigerian could not afford it - regardless of the picture all those CNN commercials for Nigerian banks are trying to paint.
At $5,925 he might as well start making plans for a house made out of gold.
I just like house the house can be infinitely expandable, building larger pinwheels around the outside until it becomes insanely difficult to reach the center.
See? This is why Lex Luthor is such a brilliant criminal mind.
He knows (as did his father) that the land is the only resource they are not making more of.
Well... other than time. They are making even less of that one. But time-travel is not really his thing.
You expand UPWARD - not outward.
Expanding out wastes space. That is why all those big population centers, I think they are called cities, have all those tall buildings.
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If you read the article you'd see that one of the points of this project is to rebuild houses after disasters, so in that case the people already own the land.
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Ironic, rebuilding houses after disasters that won't stand up to future disasters.
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There are still places in the US where you can get a free land grant.
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That was the first thing that occurred to me too. Anyone can throw up walls and a roof on the cheap. That's NOT the problem. Then problem is:
1) Finding the LAND to put it on (and KEEPING it)
2) Security of the land/household (your house is only as secure as your ability to defend it from someone else wanting to take it)
3) The amenities and infrastructure needed to make the house sanitary and comfortable (I.e. sewer service, plumbing, affordable electricity, etc.).
The physical house itself is the LEAST of poo
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Nevermind that. Permitting, one-time taxes, environmental reviews, and various other government fees will kill you. Worse yet, you have no idea how much all that will cost because the government agencies bill for professional services by the hour. You think AT and T would be bad as a monopoly again? At least your phone bill had a stated rate. The permitting and inspection process has no such animal. It will "cost a lot", but you have no idea how much.
That kills the project right there. A lot of us would love to do a project like that. We can predetermine the cost of the land. We can predetermine the cost of a pre-fab structure. We can even get reasonable estimates for foundations if we know the dimension of the structure; but that's as far as you can go. After that, it's anybody's guess. Unless you have money to burn, or are willing to risk not being able to complete the project within a reasonable budget, you have to say "no".
I have actually seen uncompleted projects for sale by desperate sellers. It's a sad state of affairs.
This is in California, BTW so it might not be so bad elsewhere; but something tells me it's not much better.
Huh. Second time I get to reference the Earthship guys. They've put up a map of what they call Pockets of Freedom [earthship.net] which are places in the US that don't have building codes or allow for "experimental architecture". Too bad none of them are in my area. :-(
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News for nerds? Or news for lazy people who can't research anything on their own let alone click on a link.