This house was built in 40 days for a cost of only $6000 house. Backyard Blitz eat your heart out. Picture: Ying chee Chui Source: news.com.au
The house has a modular layout, with rectangular room units surrounding a central courtyard space. Picture: Ying chee Chui Source: news.com.au
The house has a modular layout, with rectangular room units surrounding a central courtyard space. Picture: Ying chee Chui Source: news.com.au
THEY toiled for 40 days and $US6000.
No, it?s not the start of an Old Testament story - it?s the beginning of what some architects and engineers hope will be a low-cost design capable of housing the world.
The end result of those 40 days of labour was the "pinwheel" house - the first prototype in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s (MIT) $US1000 ($1026) house project aimed at bringing low-cost housing to areas affected by natural disasters and poverty.
While it carries the luxury price tag of $US6000 the pinwheel's designer Ying chee Chui told news.com.au she hoped it would help to drive innovation in low-cost housing design.
?Worldwide, I am hoping that the publication of the pinwheel house can arouse public attention on low cost housing for poverty and disaster reconstruction,? she said.
?Thus, more innovative designs can be executed to improve living and overall environment for the people in need.?
Using that $US6000, Chee created a house incorporating a hollow brick wall, reinforced steel bars and insulated roof panels that is built for both hot and cold weather.
And in the case disaster strikes twice the pinwheel is designed to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.
What?s it like to live in?
Chee told news.com.au for her nothing was ?happier and more worthy? than when the family living in the pinwheel told her the ?house is comfortable" and they especially enjoyed the "cross ventilation and natural sunlight from the courtyard?.
Chee said the 7.9m earthquake that killed 70,000 people and left 5 million without homes in China's Sichuan Province in 2008 was the reason she took up the project.
?A year later, millions of victims remained homeless, living in makeshift camps with little money to rebuild their homes,? she said.
?For me, the initiative to take this studio is not to save the world, but to do as much as I can, as an architect, to build a liveable, safe and affordable house for them."
MIT?s release of the project this month comes after a year of natural disasters highlighting a desperate need for affordable shelter capable of being constructed quickly.
The tsunami that struck Japan in March left tens of thousands dead and many more without shelter while closer to home the Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquake were smaller in scale but no less devastating for those involved.
Meanwhile, even without natural disasters an estimated one billion people will be homeless tonight.
The idea to attempt building $1000 homes was first conceived by Tony Ciochetti from MIT?s Center for Real Estate, and inspired by the One Laptop Per Child foundation that brings low-cost computers to children.
?There is a huge proportion of the world?s population that has pressing housing needs,? Ciochetti said.
He said that like One Laptop Per Child?s aim of developing $100 computers the idea of the $1000 house is intended as a challenge to designers: ?Can you build affordable, sustainable shelter for such a large population??
While the design may work well as affordable accommodation for individuals in disaster areas Professor Anna Rubbo from the University of Sydney warned against its use in areas afflicted by poverty.
?As disaster housing this could be quite good,? Prof Rubbo told news.com.au
?But in areas where poverty is the cause of housing shortages you can achieve better results by working with people as partners."
She said attempts to impose measures on those in poverty by a third party were often short-lived or doomed to failure.
?It's better to go in at a lower level instead of the top down approach.
"The urban poor are creative enough.?
You can find out more about the $1000 house project at MIT's website.
0 comments:
Post a Comment