Slashdot Mirror
Cal Earth Creating Different Housing
ClosedLoop writes "
Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of the
Cal Earth Institute.
I found myself in southern California's high desert listening to
Iranian-born writer, award-winning-architect, and Cal Earth Institute founder
Nader Khalili
present his vision of affordable housing that the world's people
can build for themselves. Judging from his
research structures
(and EcoDome), he's not far
from his goal. He also works with NASA on
ideas for structures that
can be built from local Lunar or Martian materials.
"
Martian teepees?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
People have been making structures for themselves for a long time. From the towering A-frame lodges of the Pacific Islands to the mud-brick adobe dwellings of the American plains, eco-friendly housing has been around for literally all time.
These designs all require some kind of special material or parts that aren't so easily available in many areas. Fortunately, the dwellings these indigenous people have been using since the beginning of their civilization will work just fine.
nice to see a look towards 'nature' with curved and organic lines. a cactus is a powerhouse due to its round shape. we could make our homes such too.
living in this straight line box is getting old.
> ... that the world's people can build for themselves.
So, tell me, who exactly built them before?
Do I see Gaudi style catenary arches?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Honi soit qui mal y pense ;-)
Thank god that someone is finally addressing the Martian housing crisis.
I was more worried about the theta rays eminating from the Index whitepapers.
So how much does it cost? They only list the price
for the plans.
I found the site interesting, I'm always looking for interesting, durable building techniques for the "Dream House". What I did not find was what these houses are like to live in. They looked pretty comfortable to live in for the California/desert climate, but I wonder how they hold up in rainer climates like the US southeast or even Northern plains like North Dakota, etc.
Property values plummet.
See? Slashdot's bringing it all together. We can build the H3 reactor buildings out of ceramic!
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
They can also be constructed from easily available materials such as wood or concrete. But more importantly, they are designs your local building inspector can wrap their brain around so you can actually get a permit to build one.
The bags of sand/adobe method probably isn't going to fly on anything more than an experimental scale.
Cheers,
OK this is a cheap jibe, and these houses do look nice, but most cultures have rather good traditional building styles based on local materials, and they are under threat mainly from so-called architects, and the heritage industry which wants to preserve them as they were and not allow them to be adapted to modern conditions. In fact, I have just had my house refaced and new ashlars and lintel on the front door using materials dug up a few miles away, while down the road you can see modern houses being put up with inferior stuff that has probably moved several hundred miles.
This guy may actually be doing a good job, but as others have said, it's not as if he invented doing things this way.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
...If you like to live in something that looks like it was squoze out of an elephant's arse.
part of the "Superadobe" construction is a proiper external shell. Plastering the house with a proper lime based mix will help make it reasonably waterproof. Replacing this as it's washed away is not something that can be neglected for decades on end, but it's not something that needs to be done every year either.
People often have the same notions about cob homes. If the walls are made from mud, then enough rain would cause them to weaken. In cob structures this is taken care of by proper foundation (ie a foot or so of rock along the ground before placing mud) a roof with good overhang, and proper plastering of outside walls. There are cob homes all over France and Germany and England that have stood hundreds of years.
With these structures the earth is contained in bags and interlocked with barb wire. You would want to make sure the house had a proper foundation for the walls, but the bags would help stabilize things much better than plain cob, which is already quite strong. I'm not sure if it's still online but I once read a report from a fellow who was demolishing one of these to make room for new construction, and it was pretty incredibly strong. He took a hose and shovel and had the entire dome standing on just three narrow "legs." It took quite a lot of deliberate undermining the foundation to cause the dome to finally collapse.
What I find really amazing is the concept of using solar energy to heat the soil to magma, then guiding its flow to form ceramic dwellings. I've read accounts of people filling these structures with wood and firing them in order to make ceramic domes, but the notion of directing magma flows is pretty... "ambitious."
I think these represent a reasonable compromise.
Unlikely to appeal to the brick box with a tar paper roof mentality, but I've run these designs past a lot of people and most like them. We're building one with an off-grid power system. Should be done by this time next year.
Guess we'll find out the hard way about resale value when it comes time to move. We'll see if people scoff at the idea of living in a radar dome.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Personally I think these look ugly - I'm more a subterranian housing guy myself. However, the construction method seems pretty damn good. Eventually someone will come up with the right mix of cheap construction, space efficiency, strength, comfort and general coolness. Then I'll go live in one.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
The outside of these things, and other similar structures, use a mixture of clay and sand and often organic matter building up an earthen render nearly two inches thick. Even though this withstands light infrequent rain quite well often a more resilient topcoat is added. Traditionalists lean towards a lime based render. Use of cement in the render will also give it waterproof qualities but is not considered as a natural a finish.
Anyone see the cost for the IP? several thousand dollars, (granted not a large amount considering the costs of building houses). Still I get the feeling the project is supposed to be helping out the poor/disenfranchised (or maybe I'm just reading hippy-vibes that aren't there and who knows maybe they do give it away to poor people in third world countries who could never afford it). Still anyone know any um "Open Source" architecture that is similiar this? I've heard of people attempting to do open-source bio-tech, why not architecture?
Actually, there are some people already doing more forward looking home building.
http://www.monolithicdome.com/
We are seriously thinking about building our house using this product in a few years. Its going to either one of these domes or using insultated concrete forms (ICF).
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
So maybe a proposal in the middle would be to look at what made the wood frame style so successful and apply that to local building materials.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
his vision of affordable housing that the world's people can build for themselves
Amazingly enough, if National Geographic is to be believed, people all over the world already make affordable housing from local materials. Size, design, and material vary widely; is it because there is no standardization that there needs to be a 'fix'?
It is lousy and/or outright corrupt local government policies concerning real estate ownership that needs to be fixed in order for more people to afford and/or built homes in the first place. Please see _The Mystery of Capital_ by Hernando de Soto.
There's a local company (to me anyway) that's also doing some interesting things with modular home units. One of their most interesting approaches is that the base prices (listed in the brochure below) include complete custom designing. I'm contemplating one of the small units as an office/guest house.
http://www.weehouses.com/
http://www.weehouses.com/weehouse_brochure.pdf
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
One thing that gets me is that even within the United States, there are major variations in climate and weather. Yet I've seen homes pretty much identical in both North Dakota and Florida. In one you have to worry about extreme cold(-30 or so), pipes freezing, snow on the roof, etc... In florida, you have to worry more about heat, humidity, bugs, mildew/mold, precipitation, and hurricane force winds.
Why should buildings built for different areas be the same? It's not like homes are moved much, so why not customize for the conditions and building materials of the area the home is to be built in?
I don't read AC A human right
Stacked bags of lime stabilized earth? The problem is, people have been building houses of local materials for many centuries, adobe, mud brick, rock. A large part of the world is in earthquake country. Iran and other places find such construction methods, stacked adobe, brick, mud brick, very problematic when an earthquake hits. Could you see a city of these things collapsing in a 7.0 scale earthquake? And how would one of these stand up to say a drenching, full blown Bangladesh monsoon? Or say a hurricane in Haiti? These are the sorts of problems needing solving. Not to mentioning affording all those bags and other bits on a income of $500 a year.
That "IP" is stuff like engineering reports and structural analysis you can take to your local building inspector to prove the structure is sound in concept and planning. This is not something anyone is likely to provide free of charge, because it is an engineer putting his firm's name on a report that could come back to haunt him. If you just want instructions on how to do it and are too cheap to pay the guy twenty fve bucks for a book you can find guides all over the internet and in your local library.
You are paying for acountability. If you cannot afford even this much accountability you're not likely to be able to afford a piece of land in the first place. Now, keep in mind I'm the guy who was flamed just the other day for complaining about building codes and called a "liberal" (I think that was meant to be an insult) for suggesting people should be able to build cob homes in town. But $2000? Do you know what plans for a stick home will cost you? $1800 is the price of a cheap old used car - it's hardly out of reach for anyone motivated enough to build a house, even if they're on a McDonald's salary.
But if you did, or if were nearly as learned as your snotty post would try to have the mods believe (congrats, btw - +4 Interesting), you'd know the Gentleman working on this project has dedicated his life to coming up with a solution to exactly what you're so ignorantly slamming him for: stable, durable housing with no special supplies.
Thus far, he's got it down to 2 mandatory items: dirt (or sand), and a woven tube. The woven tube has been further optimized with modern manufacturing, but it's super cheap - even without it, most people(s) can form tubes. He's still working with governments and industry to get this item even cheaper and mass produced, such that it can be widly deployed. Optional: water, peices of debris.
Now, I'm not sure where you're living, but dirt, fibers, water and debris are pretty common place in most of the world.
Seriously - this sort of post anger and disappoint me in both the readership and the moderators of slashdot. I'd urge the readers to consider posts like this when looking to the net for its sagely advice. =/
That looks like it would make a great beach house. I'd modify the weeTwo and add a master bath. Have you applied hurricane code type engineering standards? Another interresting construction method I've seen is precast concrete construction.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Apparently these are up to spec for southern california earthquake code.
That tells me one thing, that most of the people commenting here didn't read the copy, they just looked at the pictures.
But hey, the guy below that wouldn't want to SELL them wins the prize for "missing the point by the greatest margin" for 2004.
Carpe Deez
Here are more images of the destruction in Bam.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Luna has been under a rain of meteoroids for billions of years, and has a fair amount of nickel-iron bits mixed into it. You can literally extract these with a magnet. If I was looking to build a pressure membrane on Luna I would make it out of stainless steel, not ceramic.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
encourage huge residential structures.
1)Property tax is generally based on number of square feet so municipalities have minimum square foot requirements in zoning.
2)Mortgage valuation is heavily weighted by the number of square feet. Cost per square foot goes down as total area goes up encouraging huge houses.
3)Zoning prohibits alternative materials. In Hawaii, where we now live most of the time, it's entirely practical to build a house using split, woven, bamboo walls in single wall construction over a timber (steel, wood, bamboo, or concrete) frame. It makes for very comfortable tropical housing, the walls are typically replaced avery 10 years or so. There is no need to paint. But, try getting a permit for something like this! Also in the tropics, outbuildings for kitchen (much safer from a fire hazard POV) and WC/bath (keeps dampness from main house in tropical climate) are impossible to get through zoning.
4)Alternative construction is foreign to most architects and builders and ends up costing a LOT more. I've been researching a concrete house for some property I own on the East Coast. Finding someone affordable who is familiar with modern concrete construction (foam forms, polished aggregate flooring, embedded radiant heat, etc) is an exercise in futility. Few people do enough of this sort of work that you either pay for someone to learn or pay the premium of someone who's experience is in short supply.
5)Then there are the damn neighbors who don't want anything that doesn't look like the mail order Sears Roebuck craftsman style houses that are already in the neighborhood but for some stange reason have no problem adding square feet (2nd floor) to their houses as long as it has the right 'look'.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
From many of the other posts already present, and viewing the photos, I would venture to guess that the biggest question right now is, "How will it hold up in someplace like Minnesota, Dakotas, Main... Where is wet, cold, windy, and generally a harsh environment".
Another consideration I would have is the thermal insulation this can provide. We need to start thinking in much larger insulation performance than what we have had in the past.
Remember the earth lodge (http://fishhook.ndsu.edu/lodge/).
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
I thought there was something sort of dated about these domes.. something very very 70's like.. and then I saw it in this picture http://www.aidomes.com/pics/slide8.jpg Look at that TV.. maybe they ought to update their pictures to stop people from screaming NO!!! NO!!! to these dome homes...
I agree.. I will call on the White Sorcerer and by nightfall the forces of darkness will ride on Hobiton. We can move in shortly after the Halfings have enlarged the doors and raised the ceilings.
Eye-Eye
One Chocolate Ring to Rule them All.
..Christopher Alexanders work with, "The Production of Houses" and, "The Timeless Way of Building".
Check it out Christopher Alexander
But is it warm by today's standards?
The reason wood frame has won out in America is because of politics, not suitability to climate and people. There is already infrastructure and plenty of skilled labor available for wood-frame type construction. Anything new would require a huge overhaul of existing infrastructure, as well as logging companies (enormous entities with enormous power) giving up profits. This is also why they've been using ever smaller pieces of wood to frame the "stick frame" homes, while the price (amazingly) keeps going up.
Somehow, I don't find it surprising that other kinds of construction have not won out, or that those that have managed to gain *some* popularity have quickly been replaced by faux-work over wood frame. It's available, and said logging companies as well as construction companies (and others involved in this *huge* business) have lots invested in the knowledge and skill acquired about the products and services they use and sell. Namely those products and services related to wood-frame construction.
In my opinion, a house should be built to be appropriate to the environment it's in. I've been in both wood frame and massive earth homes on the great plains (Nebraska). Massive earth wins hands down for comfort, suitability to climate, hazards (virtually tornado proof) and ease of construction (lots of labor, but *unskilled* labor). Wood frame homes on the plains are hot in summer, cold in winter, quickly lose preferred temperature through the thin walls, and do *not* stand up to severe storms. Plus, there's little wood here. It has to be brought in from somewhere else.
The native people building earth lodges knew something. Their homes are/were comfortable and appropriate. Perhaps we should make an effort to understand what the natives built, and *why*. For example, tipis also existed on the plains, but they are exquisitely suited to a *nomadic* lifestyle in a harsh environment. Most of us want to be sedentary, so what can we learn from the earth lodge? (Keeping in mind that much can still be learned from the tipi, such as sun orientation, draft guidance for the fire, etc.) The hogan or the pueblo (southwest U.S.)? The wickiup (northeast U.S.)? The cob house (Europe)? The longhouse (various, mainly northwest U.S.)? Thatch? Stone? Earth? Daub?
Take this traditional knowledge about environmental and human suitability (minus cultural suitability, such as nomadism, except where applicable) and couple it with modern materials knowledge and we could have absolutely amazing houses. Comfortable, appropriate, safe. I think that's what Nader has done, at least for the type of house he has explored.
Unfortunately, this isn't Flamebait at all. People want houses that look expensive - if a house is cheap, noone can make money off of it.
We're still stuck in a 17th-century mentality, where being 'landed' gives you special status privileges.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
i love alternative housing, but it sure is difficult to get insurance for non-standard houses on the east coast. I would love to build one of these (or a concrete foam dome) up here in vermont (heating is super expensive), but as always - you get boned by insurance - despite the fact that it can handle more weight, wind, fire, flood, wild boars than normal wood and nail houses built by sometimes less than scrupulous contractors on tight budgets. ever wander around modern construction sites? some scary stuff going on! how long are we (as a society) all going to get screwed by insurance? right...america...forever.
They're kindof like an above ground hobbit hole.
and those of the native people is the fact that his Adobe buildings are fired after construction, turning them basically into gigantic bricks. Read "Racing Alone" and "Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture" if you're really interested in the building techniques he uses. The Cal-Earth project is really an interesting place. I got to talk to Mr Khalili on a visit there and asked him a few questions about building his homes where I live in Scotlad. He told me that the houses held in heat very well when needed, and could generate heat when needed. The homes of similar design found in his native Iran not only need to deal with extreme heat, but also very cold nghts. Heating is easily achieved, through built-in fireplaces as well as more modern heating methods. His superadobe bags are just an easy way of creating the mud walls, sandbags filled with mud can to the same job, but potentially takes more time. Rammed Earth is another technique he discusses in "Ceramic Houses" as well as pre-made adobe blocks, and a mud slurry for cement if you don't fancy any above techniques. If we do manage to get land and planning permission for one of his superadobe buildings, it'll be a lot more affordable than buying a house in this market... even if we do invite him and a team to do the building.
http://www.hybridadobe.com/