5 ms·

> houses built in factories (like cars) and delivered to the site by helicopter. You could roll out a whole neighborhood in a week or two. I'm currently writi

> houses built in factories (like cars) and delivered to the site by helicopter. You could roll out a whole neighborhood in a week or two. I'm currently writing a series on designing my own home and contrasting it with some soul-crushing new construction around here. It's very obvious that the places cherished and loved in New Hampshire were the villages built slowly, and the places least loved are the ones flash formed overnight by contractors trying to max out $$. Building on site is not very expensive but I'm not sure that making it cheaper is fixing any of the major problems with housing. It would just give more life to planning for lifeless sprawl. If anything, we need ways to build more beautiful houses better or cheaper, in smaller, odd and non-level lots. Not assembly line houses.

madhadron 7y ago
There's a happy medium. A lot of things like roof trusses are much more precisely and cheaply built in a shop and then transported to the site. But, yes, most houses around me have so many flaws that it seems problematic to count them as assets. Christopher Alexander has a lengthy calculation on this in 'The Nature of Order.'
BurningFrog 7y ago
Houses can be custom built in a factory. They don't have to be identical copies at all, in the computer age.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Agree with this. I live in a newish housing estate in a relatively affluent area of the UK, where every single house has the same cladding, the same colour of roof, the same colour of doors, the same colour and style of windows, the same small patch of grass out the front, and each house is separated by less than 2m. Walking around the place feels... wrong, hollow, eerie somehow. And yet, many people seem to love this homogeneous kind of place. Thing is, as you point out, it doesn't have to be this way - it's local planning regulations and NIMBY neighbours that are the problem. Why does every house need to look almost identical? Why do I need permission to paint my front door a different colour? It's not prefabrication that prevents diversity - it's policy.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  You'd think that! You'd think that about something very simple, too, like door hardware. Eastlake (mid 1800's) style hardware has all these beautiful engravings on knobs, plates, hinges, even little places like the mortise plates that are rarely seen. Surely today in the computer age the doorknobs on half-million dollar homes must be more beautiful than these. But they're not.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    I think people want this, and manufacturers can supply it. But it doesn't conform to regulations and/or everyone that has a veto in the planning and permit process.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    I can make you an insanely intricate door if you want with a cheap CNC machine. But I don't see a ton of demand for it. Also, the vast majority of the cost of a half million dollar home is the land.
- analog31 7y ago
  Indeed, I grew up in a neighborhood that was built during the 50s, and I first developed this sense that I could find my way around anybody's house. Then I realized that all of the houses had identical floor plans but different exterior finishing and were oriented differently. It took me years to figure this out, even though I lived in the middle of it.
ozim 7y ago
Second that, and also parent poster thinks you can fix people problems with "build moreee hoouses". There is no technology that fixes people problems. I would say Skynet from Terminator was onto something but still failed :)
- carapace 7y ago
  You can fix homelessness by building more houses, eh?
  - ozim 7y ago
    Of course you are going to let everyone live in premium location of their choice.
justin66 7y ago
> Building on site is not very expensive Compared to building the same stuff in a factory, it is.
mstj 7y ago
Would you be willing to share the series that you're working on? I'm looking to design my own home and very much agree with what you have to say. I'd be interested in hearing more of your thoughts.
carapace 7y ago
You're wanting Christopher Alexander, "Pattern Language" and then "The Nature of Order"; his site: Living Neighborhoods https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm TL;DR: Buildings and neighborhoods should be designed in situ by the people living there. The PL volumes are earlier and seminal (both SimCity and the concept of "Patterns" in programming are two examples) while the more mature Nature of Order is nearly mystic. I'm convinced that if we could combine the ideas of Pattern Language with applied ecology we could create a new form of civilization so beautiful our ancestors would consider it Heaven on Earth.

madhadron 7y ago

There's a happy medium. A lot of things like roof trusses are much more precisely and cheaply built in a shop and then transported to the site. But, yes, most houses around me have so many flaws that it seems problematic to count them as assets. Christopher Alexander has a lengthy calculation on this in 'The Nature of Order.'

BurningFrog 7y ago

Houses can be custom built in a factory. They don't have to be identical copies at all, in the computer age.

GordonS 7y ago
Agree with this. I live in a newish housing estate in a relatively affluent area of the UK, where every single house has the same cladding, the same colour of roof, the same colour of doors, the same colour and style of windows, the same small patch of grass out the front, and each house is separated by less than 2m. Walking around the place feels... wrong, hollow, eerie somehow. And yet, many people seem to love this homogeneous kind of place. Thing is, as you point out, it doesn't have to be this way - it's local planning regulations and NIMBY neighbours that are the problem. Why does every house need to look almost identical? Why do I need permission to paint my front door a different colour? It's not prefabrication that prevents diversity - it's policy.
simonsarris 7y ago
You'd think that! You'd think that about something very simple, too, like door hardware. Eastlake (mid 1800's) style hardware has all these beautiful engravings on knobs, plates, hinges, even little places like the mortise plates that are rarely seen. Surely today in the computer age the doorknobs on half-million dollar homes must be more beautiful than these. But they're not.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  I think people want this, and manufacturers can supply it. But it doesn't conform to regulations and/or everyone that has a veto in the planning and permit process.
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  I can make you an insanely intricate door if you want with a cheap CNC machine. But I don't see a ton of demand for it. Also, the vast majority of the cost of a half million dollar home is the land.
analog31 7y ago
Indeed, I grew up in a neighborhood that was built during the 50s, and I first developed this sense that I could find my way around anybody's house. Then I realized that all of the houses had identical floor plans but different exterior finishing and were oriented differently. It took me years to figure this out, even though I lived in the middle of it.

ozim 7y ago

Second that, and also parent poster thinks you can fix people problems with "build moreee hoouses". There is no technology that fixes people problems. I would say Skynet from Terminator was onto something but still failed :)

carapace 7y ago
You can fix homelessness by building more houses, eh?
- ozim 7y ago
  Of course you are going to let everyone live in premium location of their choice.

justin66 7y ago

> Building on site is not very expensive Compared to building the same stuff in a factory, it is.

mstj 7y ago

Would you be willing to share the series that you're working on? I'm looking to design my own home and very much agree with what you have to say. I'd be interested in hearing more of your thoughts.

carapace 7y ago

You're wanting Christopher Alexander, "Pattern Language" and then "The Nature of Order"; his site: Living Neighborhoods https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm TL;DR: Buildings and neighborhoods should be designed in situ by the people living there. The PL volumes are earlier and seminal (both SimCity and the concept of "Patterns" in programming are two examples) while the more mature Nature of Order is nearly mystic. I'm convinced that if we could combine the ideas of Pattern Language with applied ecology we could create a new form of civilization so beautiful our ancestors would consider it Heaven on Earth.