Tim Tyler's ideas on ultra-low-cost shelter.
df-
I am very interested in ultra-low-cost shelter. Any and all ideas are
welcome about how to design and build these shelters.
tt-
"Ultra-low-cost shelters" conjours up images of tents and polytunnels
for me.
What could be done to improve those?
Insulation: perhaps twin-layer structures - or bubble coverings.
Insulation seems like an understudied area of cheap shelter to me.
Better ground mounts: I'm sure there's room for progress in this area;
Better fabrics: I'm fairly convinced fabric coverings should have
structural
elements on all scales. Something rather like the fractal pattern on
leaves.
The aim would be to be light, strong and resistant to spreading tears.
At
the moment, fractals and architecture rarely seem to mix - but
hopefully,
that will change.
Flooring and floor insulation - I suspect this is an area where
significant improvements could be made as well;
Of course better and cheaper materials will arrive as time passes.
Eventually we will have spider silk and then fullerene ropes to play
with.
Another area where improvements could be made is in labour costs. The
ideal
on this front would be a self-assembling shelter. I do not rate labour
costs as being of critical importance at the moment - but if material
and design
costs plummet, they may gain in significance.
How to make a self-assembling house? One approach is pre-fabrication.
I find it hard to see if there will be more of that in the future or
not. Another approach is to make structures that fold up. Many tents
have sprung hinges that self-assemble into a rigid framework with some
gentle persuasion.
Perhaps future shelters will behave similarly.
No doubt, use of robots for construction will become more widespread.
I can imagine that today's earthmovers, cranes, drills and the like
will someday be replaced by some sort of home-building spider that
crawls into action, weaves a house, and then moves on to the
neighbouring location.
df-
This dome assembles itself. It can be robot or child constructed. It need not be fabric.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/ART/BRIDGES2004/domes/DSCF0095b.html
Have you thought about the model?
tt-
If I was asked to construct a "full coverage" dome out of flat sheets
tomorrow,
I'd probably use a layout something like:
http://hexdome.com/models/playing_cards/soccer_ball/graphics/card.jpg
There may be some better layouts than this one - rather like the
original
plydomes - but I'm not sure how to make them yet.
I'm not very interested in this sort of construction, though.
For one thing, I'm not very keen on domes for most applications that
don't *require* large spans. Nine times out of ten, tubes are
superior.
For another I'm mostly concerned with building shelter for plants - not
people. Plants need light, and don't mind noise; thin transparent
sheeting seems to be more suitable for sheltering them.
df-
Have you checked out Adian's new model? Equal edges. 260 vertex hex-pent.
http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/rossiter.equal.edge.gif
tt-
The same as with your cones. In fact the layout presented is identical
to the one your cone picture illustrates - except that instead of using
circles, I use three rectangles arranged in a triangle joined together
as a substitute
for a circle - and the rectangles are joined together so that they form
a slight cone.
http://hexdome.com/models/playing_cards/soccer_ball/graphics/card.jpg
The conventional plydome designs seem to use a layout rather like a
brick wall - and tile each icosohedral face separately. The "brick
wall" layout makes
a good match for rectangular materials - and (I think) results in
reduced overlapping material - at some cost in some rather odd joins
where the
icosahedral faces meet each other.
http://www.sover.net/~triorbtl/tn/D42l-94-107.jpg illustrates the
layout.
With a tube (i.e. something like a polytunnel *rather* than a dome),
you
can make it longer without starting again - tubes have modularily and
extensibility.
Tubes curve in one direction - domes curve in two directions - making
them harder to cover with strips of material.
With tubes covering materials can be rectangular. You can easily cover
tubes with strips of polythene - or with rectangular corrugated PVC.
Dome coverings tend to be composites of nasty polygons - resulting in
lots of cutting of material and wastage.
Scaling up a dome typically produces a high ceiling - and high ceilings
cost money to construct.
IMO, about the only place domes should be used for functional reasons
is where a large span is *required*. I don't think that's a
requirement
for most houses - or for most farmers.
One of the positive things about a dome is that the curvature in two
dimensions produces good strength properties. However, a tunnel is
supported by the ground along its length. It can't bend in that
direction in the first place. Much strength against forces applied
along its length would be redundant.
Plydomes can often have different layouts from strut-based constructs.
The different material has different properties - and that results in
quite different designs.
I was suggesting that thin sheets were more suitable for housing plants
than humans - since they don't mind rain banging on the roof or wind
rattling their home - and they are often not quite so fussy about
insulation.
In the category, "Might be important."
http://www.gdrc.org/
Richard Fischbeck
Randome, LLC
18 Belfast Rd.
Freedom, Maine 04941
207-382-3051
http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/index.html
Let the games begin, as Steven E. likes to say!
http://www.roblimo.com/node/192
"Licensed, legal homeless camps. The reality is that homeless camps are the wave of the future. We are going to have more of them, so we might as well have clean, decent ones with toilets, showers, and electricity. Except they don’t need to be “homeless” camps, just campgrounds where anyone is free to stay as long as they pay minimal rent and/or help maintain the place."
The Death of a Shantytown
Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 03:49:00 PM
At about one o’clock a.m. last night, I got a call that the Umoja Shantytown had burned to the ground. The call came from an a friend, someone tied into the haphazard network of activists that came together around the common cause of the shantytown. “I’m in for the long haul,” she said. “I’ll stay all night to help out.”
But when I got there, between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m., there wasn’t much helping out to do. Umoja Village had been built out of thin wooden palettes and cardboard – the whole place had burned to the ground; there wasn’t a scrap left. The lot– which had once housed the Scott Carver Homes, then nothing, and then the ambitious, defiant shantytown – had been soaked down by the Fire Department and the air for blocks smelled like wet, burnt wood.
Across the street from the scene of the disaster, the residents were gathered in a parking lot. The Homeless Assistance Center’s Al Brown was on the scene with a van, offering transport to the HAC’s shelter. A few people took it, most didn’t –Umoja’s idealistic core was a do-it-yourself mentality that rejected Miami’s inadequate solutions to the housing shortage. In that spirit, the residents wandered the parking lot comforting each other and declaring every now and then their intention to rebuild Umoja. It was a little like a funeral, without the corpse.
And like any Umoja event, the young activist-types were there as well. Although their presence tends to be ignored in the press – earnest college kids don’t make for such compelling interviews as down-and-out homesteaders – they’ve played a big part in Umoja’s successful and clever media campaign. They had come out to the fire in the middle of the night, on a few minutes’ notice, and were busy helping out, coordinating, calling friends -- trying, like the residents, to be hopeful.
Still, it didn’t seem clear to anybody what, exactly, needed to be done – one busy-seeming fellow asked me, less than politely, to find a convenience store and buy some bread to make bologna sandwiches. At that point, it was past two o’clock in the morning: I declined.
In the midst of it all was Max Rameau, the founder of Umoja Village, the logistics man behind the day-to-day survival of the shantytown and the mastermind and public face of the movement that Umoja represented. At first, Rameau seemed to be impossibly calm about the whole thing. He mingled with residents, activists, and journalists; when a prayer was called, Rameau wandered up alone out of some corner of the lot, and joined the circle, clasping hands with two Umoja residents.
But Rameau wasn’t as calm as he looked. When asked what he was going to do, Rameau looked back with gleaming eyes, and said without flinching, “What do you mean?” It was as if he had been asked what his plans were for next winter.
“We’re sleeping here,” he finally said, looking out towards the soaked, burnt, empty lot. “We’re sleeping here tonight and rebuilding in the morning.”
His words – which he fully intends to carry out – belie the real challenge that faces Umoja and its newly homeless residents. The excuse that the city has been waiting for to remove the shantytown has come. Today, police had taped off the area and arrested several activists – Rameau included – for putting up tents on the lot in defiance of police orders. Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, who was initially against letting the shantytown remain where it was, seems more ready than ever to turn a cold shoulder to the project for good. ''Thank God nobody was hurt,'' she told the Herald. "This has always been my concern. The first time I went out there I saw those candles in these cardboard and wood boxes and it concerned me."
Reverend Richard Dunn of the Cathedral of Hope Church, a prominent figure in Liberty City politics, says he’s against the rebuilding of Umoja as well. “We support in principal what the Umoja village has done. We think they’ve made a tremendous effort, and shown in a very open way that the problem with Miami-0adade housing is deplorable. Millions of dollar has been squandered, and I think Max has done a marvelous job. . .but when you look at safety issues, especially in light of the fact that hurricane season is right around the corner, you will continue to have these kinds of things. And the next time around we might not be as blessed. It was a miracle that one lost their lives.”
Max Rameau is no fool -- it will take more than plywood, cardboard, and nails to rebuild Umoja, and he knows it. --Isaiah Thompson
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2007/04/the_death_of_a_shantytown.php