Build a House Out of Recycled Cardboard

Uosdwis writes "Well for a better environmental option to a new house that is affordable, "low cost". Australia architects Stutchbury and Pape have created a house out of recycled cardboard, Velcro, nylon wing nuts and tape. Also , most of the house is recyclable too. It can be built in six hours by two people and can be transportable in a light commercial vehicle. Viva homeownership!" We had a story a few years about a school built out of cardboard.

Comments

Price

[metlin]

The site says -

At a purchase price of just $35,000 this is a genuine short-term housing option that could be used in a variety of applications.

So, is that US $35,000 or AU $35,000?

If it's the latter, it's really quite cheap and could be helpful to build cheap, sustainable housing. Hell, I'm an out-door buff and I'd love to buy one of these that can be reused when I go on long treks and climbs.

Sure as hell beats living in a tent for weeks on end.

I can see folks like archaelogists loving this sort of thing - they go on long digs where they'd really need to set shop, and nothing would come close to something like this. Best of all, this provides for an excellent place for storing artifacts and the like and in setting shop.

However, I think that for Joe Regular to buy it, it would perhaps need to be a *little* cheaper - US $5,000 or so.

Pffft! Weekenders!

[Cally]

(Pardon me, I feel compelled to relapse into the local vernacular for a moment...) A'roight owld butt? Ow bist g'wan on?

*cough* that's better. Now, the fact is that down the in (British) West Country, we've been building sustainable housing for years. here's a straw house, for example - alas it fell foul of the planning regs and the local council are insisting it be demolished; but it'll be back up in a day or two.

Re:Pffft! Weekenders!

[rangefinder]

Keep fighting. Straw bale is the housing material of the future far more so than cardboard. Here in Ontario, Canada, even with extremes of temperature and humidity, it's more acceptable every year, as each zoning district sees other places ok'ing it. From what I understand, millions of tons of straw are burnt as waste every year.

In fact, not far from here stands what is thought to be the largest load-bearing straw bale structure in North America, the Robins' Nest Retreat, and even closer is the straw bale home built by Chris Magwood of Camel's Back Construction. With Peter Mack, Magwood wrote Straw Bale Building, which is definitive, thorough, and recommended. (Magwood, incidentally, is off the grid.)

Of course, authorities are more likely to accept structures that are thought to be permanent and safe. (For example, a post-and-beam structure with straw bale infill is a known quantity in this area.) I would worry that tearing a house down quickly only proves that... it can be torn down quickly. Good luck.

And oh yeah, before someone asks: tests by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that a properly built straw bale wall has a two hour fire rating - twice that required of conventional construction.

Re:Home sweet home

[Gorobei]

Wasn't the resolution to this disconnect the "Projects"

Basically, yes. Believing that people really just need a door to lock and place to sleep lead to the rational (but wrong) conclusion that projects would be an efficient solution.

People need a roof over their heads, but even the lockable door is questionable: most people in my NYC apartment don't lock their doors.

Christopher Alexander and Jane Jacobs have both written about what makes a successful residence, and monolithic blocks of cookie-cutter apartments isn't it. You need a graduation of public to private areas, places for people to gather both as individuals and groups, 24-hour activity in some places, a mix of commericial and residential at all levels, inviting outdoor areas, good public transit, etc.

It's virtual impossible to "fix" a giant low-income apartment building, but here are a few things you could do:

1) Convert 1 apartment per floor into a convenience store. Have long hours, and staff it as much as possible with people from the building. You want people to meet their neighbors, and small stores are a good way to do it. An active store = more foot traffic = less crime.

2) Add day-care centers (1 per 10 floors or so.) A mother with a child can't get a job unless there is someplace to leave her kid now and then.

3) Add a small health clinic. This is cheaper than the hospital's ER.

4) Break up the homogeneity: make a few two-storey rooms. Make these micro-community centers that show movies, host lectures, religious services, birthday parties, etc.

There are hundred more things you could do, but all are concerned with moving from a concrete box full of little locked apartments to a community where people know each other.

Re:Politics of poverty

[Reziac]

In most areas anyone can do the work, so long as it passes inspection afterward. But in some states it is illegal for anyone not licensed to do the work at all.

As you imply, it's not the building codes that are at fault; it's the licensing and permits (which I rant about in another post).

What the parent was really talking about was not building codes, but rather CC&Rs (aka covenants). These have nothing to do with building codes, and everything to do with "maintaining property values". Except that last is being grossly overapplied, often in ways that don't make any sense.

One example was the requirement in some California communities that all roofs be cedar-shake, so they'd all look nice the same way. But cedar is a high-oil wood, and even with fire-retardant, it's like storing gasoline on your roof -- as the big Oakland fire finally demonstrated in terms that even CC&R enforcement fanatics could understand. (Over 900 houses burned, mainly due to the susceptibility of cedar shake roofs to ignition by flying embers.) Suddenly they were no longer so interested in forcing people with fireproof tile roofs to replace them with cedar shakes.

Another example: I once looked at buying some acreage out in the middle of nowhere. It was at the very end of the road, right next to the oil lease (hardly a thing of beauty), and not visible from any other buildable property. Nonetheless, the owner-before-last (who was an architect and general contractor) had put a shitload of CC&Rs on it, such as minimum house size (rather too large for the shape of the lot), type of fencing allowed, and get this, even the colour you could paint your mailbox!! Needless to say, I didn't buy the place.

In a world that actually gave a shit about affordable housing, this isolated acreage would have allowed inexpensive housing such as a trailer, or a house built of cardboard, straw, bottles, or whatever. In California, guaranteeing contractor profits trumps affordability and even common sense.