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Airbnb Will Start Designing Houses In 2019 (fastcompany.com)
Airbnb is reportedly planning to distribute prototype buildings next year. Yesterday, Samara, a futures division of Airbnb meant to develop new products and services for the company, announced a new initiative called Backyard. The initiative is described in a press release as "an endeavor to design and prototype new ways of building and sharing homes," with the first wave of test units going public in 2019. Fast Company reports: The name "Backyard" might imply that Airbnb just wants to build Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), those small cottages that sit behind large suburban houses and are often rented on Airbnb. [Airbnb chief product officer and cofounder Joe Gebbia] clarifies that is not the case. "The project was born in a studio near Airbnb headquarters," he says in an interview over email. "We always felt as if we were in Airbnb's backyard -- physically and conceptually -- and started referring to the project as such."
Backyard is poised to be much larger than ADUs, in Gebbia's telling. Yes, small prefabricated dwellings could be in the roadmap, but so are green building materials, standalone houses, and multi-unit complexes. Think of Backyard as both a producer and a marketplace for selling major aspects of the home, in any shape it might come in. "Backyard investigates how buildings could utilize sophisticated manufacturing techniques, smart-home technologies, and gains vast insight from the Airbnb community to thoughtfully respond to changing owner or occupant needs over time," Gebbia says. "Backyard isn't a house, it's an initiative to rethink the home. Homes are complex, and we're taking a broad approach -- not just designing one thing, but a system that can do many things."
Backyard is poised to be much larger than ADUs, in Gebbia's telling. Yes, small prefabricated dwellings could be in the roadmap, but so are green building materials, standalone houses, and multi-unit complexes. Think of Backyard as both a producer and a marketplace for selling major aspects of the home, in any shape it might come in. "Backyard investigates how buildings could utilize sophisticated manufacturing techniques, smart-home technologies, and gains vast insight from the Airbnb community to thoughtfully respond to changing owner or occupant needs over time," Gebbia says. "Backyard isn't a house, it's an initiative to rethink the home. Homes are complex, and we're taking a broad approach -- not just designing one thing, but a system that can do many things."
I really want these fuckers to fail. I hate all companies in the "so-called" shared and gig economy. I hope all these guys fail in the next major recession. All of the shared economy companies prey on people and they get the better end of all of the business transactions.
No Jews allowed. The apartment-sharing service has sided against Israel by banning and delisting the apartments of peaceful Jewish civilians living in Judea and Samaria. And that’s not even the worst part.
Nor is the worst part that Airbnb is helping propel the destructive myth that Jews would abandon their claim to the disputed West Bank if only there were enough international pressure.
No, the worst part is that Airbnb has singled out Jews, and only Jews, as the one group in the world that is worthy of such censure. That’s what makes its boycott a naked act of corporate anti-Semitism.
Because my city is in the process of outright banning AirBNB and all its metastases, for driving apartment prices so high, people can barely afford them anymore.
And many cities already have.
Actually, in a process of true sovereignty of the people over their state/city (aka an actual democracy), Berlin is now planning to expropriate a big housing company! Which should make the current climate for such projects VERY clear.
(They bought up public/council housing [Unsure about the translation. German: "Sozialwohnungen"], and used several nasty tactics, to throw all the people out and make them too expensive to be affordable. So now a large amount of people are in constant threat of becoming homeless. Especially ill people, poor elderly, and low income households. The city is forced to give them homes anyway, since we're not monsters. Which means the city has to pay the huge markups. All for the profit of a company that would let people freeze on the streets, without actually providing value for those markups, That's just plain unacceptable.
Since I might remember some details wrong... : If you speak German, here's a rather good comedy show episode that goes into details, and offers sources: Die Anstalt vom 23. Oktober 2018)
In the UK house prices are already absurdly high due to net immigration that has been around 350,000 to 400,000 per year for the last 20 years. Hardly any new houses have been built, so this has simply lead to huge house price rises and considerable declines in living conditions. The rise of buy-to-let mortgages have also pushed house prices up massively and tenets end up paying to mortgage for wealthy landlords, along with some extra to cover expenses and profit. The landlords then use the profits to buy more houses, pushing prices up further. Now we have the Airbnb scum encouraging more people to buy houses so they can "share" them, where sharing simply means offering them for short-term rental.
Both political parties are a waste of time. Labour are obsessed with multiculturalism and want to bring in as many immigrants into the country as possible, while the Conservatives want to bring in cheap labour for their corporate friends. Furthermore, neither party says anything about reining in buy-to-let or Airbnb. They make occasional references to people "left behind by globalism," but what they mean by "left behind" is 'thoroughly screwed'. At some people people's tolerance will run out and it won't end well. It seems to be already happening in France and rioting will likely spread. Most of western Europe has been massively mismanaged and there will be a price to pay.
I can see it, every room will have street access and a shared bathroom!!!
Fuk that for a joke
In order to get more people to buy houses Japanese banks have started approving loans for houses that are designed to have an AirBnB unit. In otherwords kind of like a duplex where you live in the larger part of the house but a portion of the house with separate entrances is designed to be rented out. They will be designed to meet all the laws in Japan for AirBnB type rentals. The point is people looking to buy a house will be more likely to buy if they think they can rent part of it out to help pay their bills.
This concept is evily brilliant. Get others to invest their capital in land and dwellings. Then just take a percent of the transaction, zero risk, just upside. This is identical to what Uber does "leasing" cars at extortion prices. Kicker will be when bnb starts up a "mortgage" company (but it won't be called that, see Lending Club) to finance the "can't lose" adu market.
Exploitave? Absolutely
Brilliant? Absolutely
All that said, I've got 30 acres nearby a top 10 market in the USA. It's tempting to put those pastures to work.
AirBnB are to be commended. Nothing has changed in building, industry or technology. Maybe they can move the course of History. I see men who want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus - a carpenter. I meet engineers whose ideas are vaguely similar and unchanged since the pyramids. Technology isn't even comparable to the Romans, since our concrete used today could not remain standing the test of time as have the great works.
Being built today will be razed, dumped and reused structures that have no intentions of providing anything more than cashflow, temporary shelter and marketable value for resale in 8 years time. Laughingly, I see Billionaires waste their treasury on this shit, only on a grander scale not grandeur. Already, we have multi-million dollar estates dropping by 50% their value in the markets. It is a joke.
Manufactured housing likewise has become an economic reality for folks who can't afford built housing on-site. Manufactured is the new trailer housing; albeit better, nicer still its cookie-cutter gingerbread and gold-plating.
Looking where it went wrong begins immediately after adobe building and no other category added to the canon thereafter rises to sustainable, affordable and utility since. The house you grew up in will be gone in 100 years consumed by time, weather and natural decay of the material from which it was made.
First principles is solving that rubric of sustainable, affordable and utility. Kudos AirBnB attack ' utility' design elements as its " Backyard" campaign addresses land use. I'll follow whether they're cash-flow driven mission can also tackle sustainable. Otherwise, Backyard simply add to the trash heap of History another architectural form of rubble making.
Considering that Backyard started in California, perhaps they could design houses that are less vulnerable to fire. People whose houses were burned in the recent fires could benefit from replacement dwellings that are done better than cheap wood frame.