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

Re:Politics of poverty

[wass]

You want to provide people a chance at home ownership, get rid of the bullshit local "building codes" that exist for no other reason than to keep contractors and hardware stores in business.

You seem to be a really paranoid person, do you actually really believe this in your conspiracy-theory mindset? Okay, sure building codes can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but they are essential other times.It's the attitude like yours that encourages demolishing antique colonial-era houses to put up cookie-cutter rowhomes with vinyl siding. It's the attitude like yours that drives non-Americans to claim we have no culture.

Have you ever been to Santa Fe or Laos, in New Mexico? These cities are really cool because most houses are built of adobe. I'm not sure if city law requires this (it probably does), but it's really neat to walk around there and feel it. If someone dumped a few trailer homes in the middle if the adobe houses, it would ruin the character of the city. Do you think restrictions to preserve a city's character are there to keep the adobe hardware stores in business?

Another example is Savannah, Georgia. That city center is one of the most beautiful I've seen. It's one of the first planned cities in the USA, and there are lots of parks amidst all the ante-bellum character mansions. I don't know what kind of building codes exist there, but I do know that some hotel chains (I forget which) built hotels in the city center. These hotels were built very cheaply and stand our like a sore thumb against the rest of the city center. Again, do you think they should be able to build what they want, create eye-sores, destroy heritage and character, just to save a few bucks?

Okay, another example now comes from the neighborhood in Baltimore where my girlfriend and I just bought our house. This area is designated 'historic' by the city and state, and this is to preserve the historic character and charm of the neighborhood. (Our house is in the cheapest little corner of the entire neighborhood, most of the other houses there are huge mansions).

When you drive around this area, the houses are really pretty and quaint, and we want to preserve this character for the future. This means any major construction projects or paintings have to meet the approval of the architectural board. if we didn't do this, the character would be lost. Already some cheap-ass home 'flippers' (ie, they buy a house, do the cheapest shoddy renovations they can, and sell it for double the price later) tried to get away with very cheap non-characteristic 'repairs'. Luckily, most of their attempts failed. Note that this is only the outside appearance of the house. You are free to do what you want inside.

If you want to put up a trailer home to save costs, then you shouldn't be living in this neighborhood but in the thousands of other places that such a home would be allowed.

You might not be able to comprehend this, but there's actually character and culture here in the states, some of which is architectural. And it's not a conspiracy to want to preserve the living history.