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MIT's $1,000 House Challenge Yields Results
An anonymous reader writes "MIT's $1k House Project is an extraordinary challenge to provide safe and healthy homes for the world's burgeoning population. The Pinwheel House (PDF), a student project which helped serve as a catalyst for the challenge, has been completed in China by architect Ying chee Chui. Students have come up with a dozen or so designs to meet the challenge and improve living conditions for not just emerging economies but larger nations as well."
This wouldn't fly in the US.
Some construction union would intervene claiming substandard construction or what-not, code violations etc, etc just to protect their jobs.
The pipe-fitters unions did the same thing when PVC piping came out--they lobbied for code changes that required copper tubing, changes that ruled out Joe-Homeowner doing the work himself. Most building codes make it very hard for the do-it-your-selfers, sometimes requiring them to actually get a contractors license. There is no reason for this if the work passes inspection--it exists simply to protect the jobs of people that need to get with the times, adapt and get on with their lives rather then holding back the rest of humanity.
I understand that the project was formed with the developing world in mind, but I think that the concept is worth pursuing in the developed world as well.
The trouble is that all of the concepts that I read about sounded like ideas for a cabana on the beach. While that may work in spots where temps stay moderate year round, the rest of us could never make that work. Also, most of the ideas I read about sounded pretty light on engineering and heavier on design (architecture).
I'd like to see this project expanded into something resembling the next generation of manufactured/modular homes. We're in sore need of reasonably priced structures that are within the realm of an average person's abilities that retain style and form beyond an ugly box.
I agree that the developing world needs cheap ways to house their citizenry, but let's not forget to solve some of the problems that we still face here at home (in the US).
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
Depends on what you are trying to do. For instance in China a huge problem is the massive fight of people from the rural areas to the cities(whether they move legally or not, China still uses the hukou system to basically force people to stay in the area they were born in). This creates huge problems in both the rural and the urban areas. In the urban areas you have a lot of poor, usually uneducated(and often times single male) people flooding into the cities, increasing crowding, making competition for jobs even more intense, etc. Meanwhile the rural farms are left with labor shortages, shortages of young people to take over the work, etc. This in turn helps to drive up food prices which places a lot of pressure on the Chinese government.
As a result the Chinese government right now is trying to find ways to make rural living more palatable to young people so that they will stay in the countryside instead of moving to the city. Affordable, comfortable housing could go a long way towards that goal.
Monstar L
You're missing the point. What I meant was that when compared to say, my parents' generation, my generation clearly has to compete on a different level. When I was out of work straight after college my father was baffled by this, when he was that age jobs could be had by just going to a company you thought looked fun to work for and asking them for a job. And in the workplace these days the level of performance expected by each employee is higher (at least in a lot of white-collar jobs). Basically our (western) society has become a lot more competitive and for the average person I just don't think the everyday gains outweigh the cost.
Now yes, if you go back to the 19th century and the wave of industrialization that swept through the world things were worse, the point is that we took a few steps forward and then we started taking steps backwards again.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
The writers created a competition, asking students, architects and businesses to compete to design the best prototype for a $300 house (their original sketch was of a one-room prefabricated shed, equipped with solar panels, water filters and a tablet computer). The winner will be announced this month. But one expert has been left out of the competition, even though her input would have saved much time and effort for those involved in conceiving the house: the person who is supposed to live in it [in Mumbai] We recently showed around a group of Dartmouth students involved in the project who are hoping to get a better grasp of their market. They had imagined a ready-made constituency of slum-dwellers eager to buy a cheap house that would necessarily be better than the shacks they’d built themselves. But the students found that the reality here is far more complex than their business plan suggested. To start with, space is scarce. There is almost no room for new construction or ready-made houses. Most residents are renters, paying $20 to $100 a month for small apartments. Those who own houses have far more equity in them than $300 — a typical home is worth at least $3,000. Many families have owned their houses for two or three generations, upgrading them as their incomes increase. With additions, these homes become what we call “tool houses,” acting as workshops, manufacturing units, warehouses and shops. They facilitate trade and production, and allow homeowners to improve their living standards over time. None of this would be possible with a $300 house, which would have to be as standardized as possible to keep costs low. No number of add-ons would be able to match the flexibility of need-based construction. In addition, construction is an important industry in neighborhoods like Dharavi. Much of the economy consists of hardware shops, carpenters, plumbers, concrete makers, masons, even real-estate agents. Importing pre-fabricated homes would put many people out of business, undercutting the very population the $300 house is intended to help. Worst of all, companies involved in producing the house may end up supporting the clearance and demolition of well-established neighborhoods to make room for it. The resulting resettlement colonies, which are multiplying at the edges of cities like Delhi and Bangalore, may at first glance look like ideal markets for the new houses, but the dislocation destroys businesses and communities.
A recent (PBS-affilliated POV) film, Good Fortune , expands further on the damage that can be done via good intentions when it comes to rehousing folks.
... it wasn't something they would have wanted. I helped vaccinate kids, which was something they wanted, and everyone won.
Many economists, journalists, physicians, and so forth have written extensively about the aid industry, and the White/Educated/Western/Elite-knows-best mentality. I certainly am no exception — I moved to Ghana with notions of making solar lights in my spare time, so that persons without grid-access could see at night, only to come to understand that this was a product that most people in the place I was living would have little interest in. It didn't matter that I'd spent months figuring out how to cram solar panels and LEDs into wire-bale jars, media blast them with garnet to diffuse the light better, and so on
For some more literature on this sort of thing, I'd recommend William Easterly's
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
"Then there's the cost of getting services to your chosen site. It costs a bit to get electricity, water, and sewerage to a building site, or to provide a drilled well and septic system in a site that's too remote for municipal services."
Mostly due to corrupt laws. Yes a pit Privy can be done properly, but a simple septic leech field is not that hard to engineer and build. Electricity is easy enough to do with very low cost scavenged parts to make wind power and heating can also be done simply by making the place solar efficient.. in Texas you really dont need heat just insulation and a central fireplace for the 2 days a year it drops below 60.
LAW states you must have X outlets per room, and XX amp of electrical service in the house. Hell they even dictate the number of Cable TV outlets required nowdays.
A 500SQ foot pinwheel home is large enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably. If you are not the typical american slob you can get away with a pair of $200.00 Harbor Freight Solar panel kits and a couple of deep cycle batteries for electricity to give you lighting for the entire home and a couple of outside lights, and if you are lucky you can charge that OLPC laptop that is used for the rich kids. if your well is properly sized you can run it also off of the solar+battery system. a propane tank outside will supply cooking, heat for home and water.
Very comfortable and sustainable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Which is a funny way of writing $1000.
Second, that is slightly over a $1.5k more than the Chinese per capita GDP of about $4,382.
Compared to the average US per capita GDP that is about as much as a $60k house.
Do I really need to comment that?
And all that is before even getting a building permit.
Which is often the greatest single expense when building a house in the third world and other "growing democracies" due to inefficiencies of the bureaucracy and the built-in culture of bribes and corruption.
Now... as this is apparently hailed as a "low-cost home for the poor", let's go see what the really poor make.
You know, countries where that imaginary $1000 is approximately around or over the per capita GDP.
Even at a $1000 per house an average Nigerian could not afford it - regardless of the picture all those CNN commercials for Nigerian banks are trying to paint.
At $5,925 he might as well start making plans for a house made out of gold.
I just like house the house can be infinitely expandable, building larger pinwheels around the outside until it becomes insanely difficult to reach the center.
See? This is why Lex Luthor is such a brilliant criminal mind.
He knows (as did his father) that the land is the only resource they are not making more of.
Well... other than time. They are making even less of that one. But time-travel is not really his thing.
You expand UPWARD - not outward.
Expanding out wastes space. That is why all those big population centers, I think they are called cities, have all those tall buildings.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens