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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?
"You can control your temperature of the flat, you can control lighting," said Donald Hughes with the Hong Kong Housing Society.
...
Just imagine
Wait a minute. That sounds like a cubicle. 'Cubicle' and 'dream cyber home' do not belong in the same article, ok, guys?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
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I dunno...I wouldn't want to buy a house designed by a company with a name like "The Integer Group"...sounds limiting.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
How is that possible?
I thought the web browser was an inseparable part of the home.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
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.
Ack! Dont tell my wife! She will want that! I can see it now....
Honey can you move this wall over here? Then that wall over there and then this over there?
Later that week...
Honey can you move that wall back over there? Maybe this wall over here?
I can already hear my own screams.....
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
First off: they're using a stylus for the main control panels? Does the designer of this brilliantly planned system use salad tongs to throw light switches in his current house or something?
"You can control your temperature of the flat, you can control lighting..."
Hey, they're onto something here! A method for controlling lighting--patent it while it's hot, lads! And controlling the temperature of one's flat? Sheer brilliance! Can I do all of this with the same stylus, as well??
"If you have a party, and want to control your music sound, you would basically be able to press [a few central] switches instead of walking around the whole flat."
Well hell, looks like I should have held off on buying that "Walk around my whole flat" stereo control system. Of course, I still get a good workout when setting the equalizer...
"The Internet fridge"
I stopped reading the article right here. Anything that talks about the Internet Fridge is doomed to failure. It's like the Goodwin's Law for overuse of technology.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
You come back from the store to discover that your kids remade the house into a giant giraffe.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
"How"?
"You know all those unsold floor-to-ceiling movable office partititions we have in the warehouse?"
"Yeah, and we've got another ten acres worth coming back from the WorldCom bankruptcy. Nobody's fitting out office space right now. What do you want to do with them?"
"Let's team with a builder to build house shells and use the partitions as interior walls in homes. It'll be cheaper than regular construction. And homeowners will be able to reconfigure; add a bedroom for a new kid, open it up when the kids leave.
"That will never fly; house buyers are too traditional".
"Maybe if we had a sales gimmick... Let's call it a "modular cyber house".
"What's "cyber" about office partitions?"
"We'll throw in a home control system. We've got lots of commercial building automation parts in the warehouse too."
"Well, maybe. But we need a design for a house. Just a big shell, but modern-looking".
"Just build a big round roof, and frame it with stock glass and metal exterior panels. That'll be cheap to build. It'll look like those old '50s designs from that Fuller guy. And prices are really low on exterior panels right now."
"This could work out. Let's draw up some renderings of what it would look like and get some press. Even if it doesn't work out, maybe we can do a bulk sell on the partitions to some homebuilder."
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.