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Machine-Grown Housing
Eric Harris-Braun writes "Over at Wired, Bruce Sterling has a story about a new way of looking at architecture and building. In fact, computer sculpting of housing is already being done, and non-planned building as an architectural philosphy, is as old as we are, as you can read in The Hand Sculpted House."
Build a House Out of Recycled Cardboard
no offense but essentially every home is built onsite in a custom manner.
Huge portions of home building could be done in large factories, and equally huge strides could be made standarizing the hookups to electricity, communications and plumbing.
i'm not talking about crappy mobiles...i'm talking about the absurdity of custom electrical, plumbing and framing on hundreds of millions of homes.
the endless permits etc...people complain about software but if software were as absurd as home building you would have to get several CDs from various licensed contractors, get a permit from the state to install a computer, have the computer inspected as it is installed and each CD of components is inserted, etc...
The problem with most authoritarian mindsets is that they think that it's their job to force people to do what they want, when they want, as they want. When you get good at riding the horse in the direction it's already going you can cause all kinds of interesting results.
The next step for Berkeley is to pave the footpaths with something that feels as good as grass, is more fun, and easier to keep up. Take old rubber tires and cut them into 1 cm. chunks. Mix that with a slury of earth and a white polymer, and you get a cool, soft, inexpensive material that is waterproof and resilient. It'll give as you walk on it, and feel good to the bare footed. It'll last years and can be chewed up and reused if, and when the paths change.
By making the spaces conform to human use, and by making the space intelligent enough to conform as humans use the space, you eliminate space as the primary constraint to human creativity and imagination. This is the evolution of the conscious environment. This is the trend, creating places for human beings that honors our need for shelter, but removing the artificial limitations of social construct. We're genetically predisposed to tribalism. Our religion and societies have worked against that. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the forces that shape our interactions begin to yield to the fundamental designs of our own humanity. I for one welcome the change.
Genda
-- The best way to teach a generation to think outside the box, is to eliminate the boxes...
That is because the early interstate highways did not have, as a primary design goal, the confort of civialians driving on them. They were meant to be used as troup and equiptment transports during a war with the USSR and secondary landing strips for military aircraft is why they had to have X feet of straight road every Y feet.
As a roadgeek, I must point out that's a myth.
I can summarize a working minimum of what you need to know about building in cob in one post. That's ridiculously easy compared to brick-and-wood housing!
FYI, here goes:
- Clay, sand, staw. Clay binds, sand prevents shrinking, staw acts as rebar. Use subsoil from the site, tread in the straw. Measure your subsoil by shaking it in water and letting it settle in layers, to see if you need to add clay or sand. Make up test bricks to see if you got the mix right for shrinkage, cracking, and strength. You'll need a higher percentage of sand than you expect. Sieve out rocks and gravel to avoid introducing weak spots.
- Apply it wet enough to squish, neither runny nor hard. Build upwards iteratively, stopping each course just before it starts to sag under its own weight. Measure the plumb with a spirit level and cut off soft cob to keep it from bulging or sagging. Walls can be straight or tapered, which is stronger and saves time/effort building the upper parts. Test taper by gluing a precisely angled bit of wood onto a spirit level. Tapered outside and plumb inside makes furniture an easier fit.
- Overengineer the thickness of the walls. Theoretically, precisely mixed cob applied with skill can be used in walls a foot thick, but build them two feet thick (or more) at the base.
- You need a stem wall, which is a short (waist height) hard and nonporous wall upon which to sit the cob. Stone, concrete or brick are good. This keeps the dried mud above damp ground and rain-runoff splatter. Make the top jagged so the cob sticks. You can skip this, but your house will have a limited "shelf life". Also, the roof needs to overhang enough to throw rain clear of the walls, and you need good drainage and a site which won't flood. In general, water flowing over cob will erode it, but rain won't.
- Cob functions as "thermal mass", bringing inside temperature towards the daily mean temperature (ie: it smooths out cold and heat into continuing warmth). It doesn't insulate much. Avoid using it where you get no sun (north slope) or where the climate is cold all day. Plan the house as a passive solar collector, with windows sited to admit and trap morning and evening sun.
- Joint the cob to woodwork, especially upstairs-floor beams and roof rafters, by burying anchor points of jaggedy wood into the cob wall. Logs stripped of bark with branch-stubs sticking out are good. Don't bury rafters and beams directly into the cob, because they can shift and tear loose due to settlement and heat-expansion. Non-opening window panes can simply be buried straight into walls, with expansion foam around the edges to prevent them being crushed.
- You can build furniture straight from the cob by cantilevering outwards (go slowly) or by carving in. Tamped cob can also be used to make floors - seal the final layer with boiled linseed oil.
- Never put nonporous materials over cob, especially outside. That includes oil based paints, cement based interior and exterior plasters. Cement exterior plaster is a major cause of cob wall collapse. Water runs in through cracks, down the inside and liquefies the wall base. Instead, use mud-straw plaster or lime-sand plaster. Whitewash and casein paints can be used inside and out.
There you go, that's pretty much the beginner's course and adequate if you ignore amenities.