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Reconfigurable, Modular Dream Home
ssyladin writes: "CNN is reporting a new dream cyber home being designed by the Brits for use in Hong Kong. It combines smart home technologies of touch panels for lights, heating, water taps, with the ability to move the interior wall partitions around with a basic toolbox and about a half day of labor. No more LAN parties in the garage! The homes can also be built faster and with less waste too. Bit skimpy on the details, but its an exciting prospect if its ever finished." Concepts like this probably fill a lot of napkin doodles around the world -- what do you think this particular one should do differently?
I wrote the webmaster a little note and he responded that the videos cost money and can only be seen by subscribers. I wrote a note back saying that under Mozilla/Linux I don't even see the popup that gives me an option to subscribe, and he never wrote back.
Talk about clueless. It's the webmaster's job to make sure his site works. It plainly doesn't. The name is cnn.com, not cnnforwindows.com!
I wrote another note to BMW because their site doesn't work either. I wrote that people who demand the most out of their cars buy BMW, and people who demand the most out of their computers use Linux, and asked him nicely to support Linux. He wrote back and said he'd think about it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Does this remind anyone of the old houses of the future? I have a robot book from the early '80s with this strange modular, domed modules that were supposed to be the computer-controlled home of the future. Now that it is the future (as far as I can tell,) I'd like to know what's substantially different about this idea compared to homes of the future twenty years ago.
Though I do like the name (the Integer Group.)
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
seriously, there's no way you can live in a place where you get home and encounter a swarm of flying bugs in your kitchen. jesus christ.
I have long dreamed of this becomming widely available and accepted.
However, in talking about it among friends and collegues, I realized that most women will *not like it*.
It is too clinical and "same-same". Girls want something that makes them feel "special". If everyone has the same panels and boxes, then it will become a status symbol to have something *different*.
And we all know that:
Status_Symbol != Convenience
Table-ized A.I.
or try "manufactured" housing. Here today, gone tomorrow. This may be the seeds of the trailer parks of the future.
Sure you can move the interior walls around, but you can't add any additional living area. Need a new room for those adorable additions to your family? Sure, but that means you will have a smaller living room/master bedroom/etc.
Sure the circular layout means less building materials needed to enclose a given living area, but it plays pure heck with the idea of putting em close together (think townhomes) - they still need a large footprint to sit on.
Also, given that they are trying to sell this as an answer in an area that needs high population density, how does that silly spire (antenna?)on top work when you want to stack them vertically?
I imagine the Integer Group ran across one of those websites extolling the advantages of geodesic domes and decided it was time to update the design because they have computers and lost of wizzy gadgets.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Women already put up with living in cookie-cutter houses. They just add their own personal touches to make it their own.
With a modular system, they have even more control over their space, such as reconfiguring the floorplan. No two houses would be alike!
it's called Manufactured Housing, although most people know them by their slang name, Trailer Homes.
Seriously.
You can get Single, Double, and Triple-wide manufactured homes, and I've even seen two story setups (I used to pass a ton of these "dealerships" on my way to college each day). The basic concept is not unique, but it also isn't stupid: I seem to recall a number being quoted as about 1/3 the cost to assemble as a "custom" home (which makes sense, as these are essentially produced on an assembly line). Take modular pieces, assemble together, call it a day. No different than cubicles or the Habitrails you built for your hamster as a kid.
Is it a bad idea? I would say not at all. No one smirks at the build quality or luxury of a Mercedes Benz or BMW, but they're just as assembly line built as, say, a Kia (or Yugo or whatever). Assuming modular housing could succesfully target itself at the lower-end of the new home market, people would get a lot more house (and in a lot of cases, a better built house) than they do from the "custom" market (custom in quotations because that market is essentially nothing but cookie-cutter tract homes where housewives get to feel important because they paid $500 extra to change the color of the walls in the living room).
Stop and think about it: In Houston, which has probably the cheapest real-estate market of any major city, $100,000 gets you a stripped-down ~2,200 sq. ft. house about 30 miles from downtown. No fancy garden bathtub/jacuuzi, no structured wiring system for a house-wide network, no faux marble countertops, and shitty carpet with shitty padding. That same $100,000 could go a hell of a long way on modular housing. It needn't be a trailer home dumped on a slab; a simple arrangement of modular wall pieces available in multiple sizes and completely assembled using steel, insulation, and wallboard would be, as far as I'm concerned, just as good as one pieced together from raw materials by 6 guys who know what the hell they're doing and 40 guys who were picked up from the immigrant labor force at the 7-11 that morning.
I once worked for a subcontractor, and I needed to run some wiring through a colum that was in the kitchen area. Knowing that the wiring I was running was quite large, and would require a 3/4" hole in a 1 1/2" piece of wood, I asked the construction foreman whether or not the pillar was load-bearing. He replied, "how the hell should I know, ask the guys who made the blueprints" and returned to whatever it was he was doing. I vowed right then never to buy a home made by that particular company.
I would say that the company that can figure out the proper configuration system and negotiate contracts with the entry-level tract-home builders would be a profitable company indeed.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
(Uh, remove the space in the above link. The comment editor won't let me put in a continuous URL. Sorry . .
How Buildings Learn is amazing. Fun to read, persuasive, and rousing. It looks at building designs that work (e.g., MIT's ugly, rambling wooden lab and office structure, Building 20) and those that don't (e.g., MIT's Media Lab building, very modern and all but not given to easy adaption.
Stefan
Its funny to look at houses that were built in the 80's and see integrated gadgets like intercom system, central-vac, and B&W security cameras that probably cost a fortune back then yet do nothing for their sale price today.