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An Architect Squeezes 24 Rooms Into 344 Square Feet (Video)
- pgbovine 16y agothis is a great inspirational hack because: 1.) it scratches an important personal itch (having to live his whole life in a crowded urban apartment) 2.) it demonstrates resourcefulness and ingenuity given the (literal!) constraints 3.) the lessons he learned from hacking his own apartment could be used to improve urban living spaces in general this is a reminder that hacks don't necessarily need to be hosted on github ;)
- olalonde 16y agoWhy do reporters constantly feel compelled to use the words "green" and "eco" in every situation they can? This has absolutely nothing to do with ecology, it's simply about optimizing space usage in a city where space is extremely expensive. I guess talking about green stuff sells more.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mkr-hn 16y ago"the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment"
- kovar 16y agoThis is a very good example of "eco-friendly", and the word "green" was never used. It is eco-friendly for various reasons. Two major ones are: - The lighting is mostly natural, so there is less energy use - The space required per person, and thus the associated materials, is significantly less than a typical US living space. Further, less space means less heating/cooling requirements.
- olalonde 16y ago> the word "green" was never used. - The title of the video is "The World's Greenest Homes" - [...] is what shaped architect Gary Chang's green philosophy [...] People in Hong Kong don't live in tight spaces because they are green but because space is very expensive.
- kovar 16y agoUpvote to you. I'd downvote myself if I could. My bad. I was going off of the video only.... Yes, this isn't by choice, but lack of choice doesn't mean that it is not eco friendly.
- olalonde 16y agoRight. The result is in fact probably eco-friendly :) What annoys me a bit is I feel we are trying to force the "eco-friendly" virtue a bit too much on people who are doing nothing more than pursue their own self-interest (which I believe is perfectly fine and desirable).
- thwarted 16y agoThis is a very good example of "eco-friendly", and the word "green" was never used. Not only is it used on the title card, "World's Greenest Homes", but the narrator uses the term "green" twice as a synonym for "ecology friendly". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=35s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=35s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=3m53s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=3m53s
- forza 16y agoBecause "green" and "eco" has an audience. But I'm guessing your question was rhetorical.
- geuis 16y agoThis is something like 2-3 years old.
- zephjc 16y agoA stumbling block: effectiveness decreases as the number of concurrent occupants increases
- spectre 16y agoCool idea, but unless there is some system to lock the walls into place, this would be very dangerous in an earthquake. I've seen a number of high density file systems (same idea but just files) that caused significant safety issues in the recent Christchurch Earthquake.
- yannickmahe 16y agoAFAIK, Hong Kong is a fairly safe place earthquake wise. The main natural danger there is the typhoons.
- mhb 16y agoHe should get rid of those CDs so he can have another six rooms.
- hardy263 16y agoAlthough it would decrease the "greenness" of the home, I can imagine that making the walls motor-powered would make room switching easier. You could integrate a master controller into the wall with options for which room you want to switch to.
- dlokshin 16y agoI wonder what this guy could have gotten had he taken all the money he spent on his high tech setup and just bought a bigger, nicer apartment.
- ww520 16y agoI believe his intent is to experiment and try out different setup and tech for his business. He's just eating his own dog food.
- jarek 16y agoThis isn't high tech. In the U.S. a setup like this would be well under a hundred thousand dollars. It's not inconceivable the moving walls by themselves could be under ten thousand. That's not going to buy you a lot of real estate in a dense city.
- wladimir 16y agoLook at this with more of a hacker spirit: experimentation is not a waste of money, but important for discovering new ideas that can further the state of the art. Building/construction is a sector that has been stuck innovation-wise for a very long time. Or at least goes very slow compared to other areas of tech. It might be one step along to programmable, self-reconfiguring houses of the future.
- FEBlog 16y agoIf you a interested in self-reconfiguring houses and furniture check out this Swiss research http://biorob.epfl.ch/page-36376.html http://biorob.epfl.ch/page-36376.html
- mklappstuhl 16y agoI'm also curious what the amount of money he invested was like. While I really like the hack I think it was a quite expensive one. With a certain amount of money you can do nearly everything. The art is to do it with less.
- joelrunyon 16y agodid anyone else read this and think that there were going to be 24 actual rooms you could physically walk into at 1 time?
- iM8t 16y agoWell... This is quite cool for 1 person, but how about if a family would live in that kind of apartment? You're watching TV and suddenly your kid has to go to the bathroom..
- ck2 16y agoThere's something wrong about doing all that around complete poverty. How much did he spend creating it? No family could live like that, everyone would need a different mode. I live in 400 square feet, can't imagine a family living here, it would be rough.
- cheez 16y agoNow having one of those for each family member would be friggin cool. My kids would love it.