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The Walking House
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.
This is a house on legs in the same way that a RV is a house on wheels. Technically, sure, home is where you lay your head and all, but untill they can think of a way to shift 800 square feet of housing, it's just art/toy.
And wasn't Howl's Moving Castle British?
Don't know about that, a motorhome typically costs over $100,000. This thing only cost about $50,000 (current exchange rate). It is solar and wind powered, and can go over any terrain. I could totally see it used as a cabin off in the mountains somewhere. When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next. Great place to become a philosopher. The Thoreau of the mechanical age.
Qxe4
Also it is the price tag of the prototype ($50.000 for a prototype is cheap), they expect the resale price to be a lot lower.
yeah, but this thing is so slow it's almost useless and it's a lot smaller with less features. it's just a gimic, despite what you think you know from star wars, mechanical legs on everything is a really really bad idea when compared to wheels or tracks.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains?
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours, and these places are usually also very fertile. It also makes us very vulnerable to rising sea-levels.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
My sailboat - made of FRP, 40 years old, a classic with a sound hull and rig - cost less than $5K to buy, and I will have less than $15K in her when she is completely fixed up, including replacement of all wiring, subsystems, etc... She uses solar and wind, and is just fine living off the grid. For ease of access, though, it costs less than $300/month to stay tied up to a marina dock. Mechanical propulsion, when needed, is provided by a small outboard which consumes only 1/4 gallon/hour at full speed. She is capable and able to go nearly anywhere in the world that there is a water depth of 3.5 feet or more. Floods only give her more places to go. ;)
;)
There are many many hundreds if not thousands of older boats - power and sail - out there which get destroyed or sink due to neglect every year. With some due diligence, anyone can find a very sound vessel to start with, "recycling" in a sense, and living a lifestyle which has a very small 'footprint' of consumables. Why pay $50K for a home as small as a small boat, that can only traverse land (and that, slowly...), and which is absolutely dependent upon the grid?
Of special note is the fact that few marinas will have a true geek/nerd/IT pro in residence. Yet nearly all of them now have office computers, websites, and wireless networks - all things which can benefit from knowledgeable attention. Your skills and knowledge can make the cost of marina living a trivial sum, reducing your "existence tax" even more...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours
Not that I object to this - Just that New Orleans ended up being far more than just a harbour, so I think the correct response would be to build housing for the area - whether it be on stilts to let tidal wash from hurricanes pass underneath and survive the occasional flood, to having everybody simply live in RVs/Mobile homes and simply pull out for the occasional hurricane, to crazier stuff like building your house on a float pallet or being able to crank it up to keep it above the water line.
Either that or build cheap and simply accept that you'll be buying/building a new house every ten years or so. Or have your insurance pay, and pay the corresponding premiums. Therefore, the only people who can 'afford' to work there are the ones essential to the harbour industry who get correspondingly huge wages.
Housing in the USA today has gotten somewhat crazy. People are buying a LOT more than they need. Personally, I think that, in some circumstances, 'disposable' housing is a perfectly reasonable response. Build it cheap, replace when destroyed.
I don't read AC A human right
According to N55, the house can move at a top speed of 60m/h. Unless that's a misprint, the house better be waterproof and buoyant to protect against floods...
None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.
Despite everything else, this isn't a good usage of limited land*. Consider, a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents four times the floor space in about the same amount of actual land, far more luxury in the sense of having actual water and sewer, air conditioning, etc... Make it 6-10 stories and each apartment can be luxurious, space wise. I doubt you'd be able to stack these 6 high. Worried about flooding? I saw a condo being built that was 6 levels of parking garage and 12 levels of condo.
Humans wanting to live denser calls more for multistory buildings, and I'd like to see more arcology type structures - retail businesses on the bottom, offices in the middle, living quarters on the top, except for maybe a rooftop restaurant. Even that's flexible. Want to put the housing on even floors and the businesses on odd? That'd work too.
So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land!
The idea of the common man having a large house is a very new one in the scheme of things. I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.
Sure, land is limited, especially when you consider we need to grow crops on it still, and want a reasonable commute to work. As I said earlier - I think vertical integration, especially 'mini arcologies' is the answer. If I was a city planner I'd be working on ways to encourage them. Probably through tax breaks if they build at least as much housing into the building as they'd be anticipating working there.
Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.
Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...
As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.
*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.
I don't read AC A human right