10 ms·

Mobile Home Skyscrapers: The Elusive Dream of Vertical Urban Trailer Parks

95 points by thread_id 6y ago

pstuart 6y ago
It's such a bad idea on so many levels.
- tromp 6y ago
  I see what you did there:-)
tmikaeld 6y ago
The Kasita modules doesn't look that bad, it's very thought through. Especially the construction, which they say is like car assembly to dramatically get the costs down. I'm guessing, like any housing, power, water and drain would need to be connected.
- ianai 6y ago
  Yes the Kasita does look better. Would still hate moving stuff up that many flights of stairs though.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    In any modern building it'd be required to have elevators for ADA compliance...
- Ekaros 6y ago
  It's not too complicated. We could expand from how cruise ships are build. Where the cabins come in ready build modules and then their water, drain, power and AC is connected from outside. In shared shaft running next to the unit. So just give a option to chain a few of these units together.
nostromo 6y ago
Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo has some similarities to this concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower > The building is composed of two interconnected concrete towers, respectively eleven and thirteen floors, which house 140 self-contained prefabricated capsules. Capsules can be connected and combined to create larger spaces. Each capsule is connected to one of the two main shafts only by four high-tension bolts and is designed to be replaceable. The idea didn’t catch on however, and the building will likely be replaced in the coming years.
- nickpinkston 6y ago
  I came here to mention Nakagin. I really hope they save it. It's such a unique building. At least from the outside, I here it's not great to live in though. A more livable / less flexible/modular metabolist building is Habitat 67 in Montreal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67
everyone 6y ago
For some wacky blue sky visions of this sort of thing check out Archigram's plug in city. https://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-city-peter-cook-archigram https://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-cit...
dr_dshiv 6y ago
In Amsterdam, the qbic hotel takes a somewhat related approach. It standardizes the hotel room inside of an existing multitenet building room (ie, it is appropriate for buildings not built to be hotels). "The Cubi is a cube shaped module which can be put together like an Ikea kit inside the room. It contains the bed (with that infamous high quality Hästens mattress), a LCD TV screen, a work-and-dine set, Philippe Starck bathroom elements, safe and high speed internet connection." I'm always curious about radically cheaper ways of providing quality living.
- eecc 6y ago
  Some student home complexes in Amsterdam are built out of (I suppose new) modified shipping containers. I think it’s a brilliant design, particularly suited for rapid assembly and relocation. Ideal for disaster relief
lordnacho 6y ago
Once self driving cars are a thing it might make sense to have towers like this. You can work while travelling to a new view each day.
- musingsole 6y ago
  Self-driving RVs have been a killer dream of mine for a while now. I hate driving, but if a robot were doing it and I could hang out as if in a train, that would be awesome. The idea of your home being a container and the autodriver being a rented service just makes it better.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    If you're up for a rented autodriver service, maybe you don't have to wait for self-driving AIs. Perhaps you can rent from a pool of human drivers, doing remote driving when you want to move, the same way they fly drones.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Is an RV in a large multi-level parking structure with utility hookups a better concept? Almost like a vertical campsite. I feel like doing it with actual trailers is a bit more unwieldy.
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  This seems to be what the original idea was
rwmj 6y ago
The Stewart Brand book How Buildings Learn mentioned in the article is excellent! The only architecture book you need. There's also a 1997 BBC TV series by the author on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxFD-wxU4CoNb-gCM0-P9fjJchwUIfkep https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxFD-wxU4...)
- a9h74j 6y ago
  Brand's book so rightly emphasizes getting the ordering of layers right, IIRC. If you are familiar with condo law, stacking mobile homes (per the article) could be seen as absolutely minimizing "limited common element" and coupled utilities. -- So in a sense the book and the article match up there as well.
ianai 6y ago
They’ve got to find a way to make it not look dystopian and a place you’d like to be. A huge “nakedly” concrete structure doesn’t have much appeal. Some designs I’ve seen look like they have no guard rails, for instance. Maybe it’d look better if it looked more developed. Or if it went a fully integrated direction like a traditional high rise.
- asimilator 6y ago
  Some people like the brutalist aesthetic.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Add some neon signs and play electronic music in the background, and you’ll it’ll become a #Cyberpunk hotspot on Instagram.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Do they like it in 20 years after the concrete is all chipped and looks set to fall apart?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Brutalism largely outlived its welcome for a number of reasons. But one of them is that it literally does not age well.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - wongarsu 6y ago
      I like brutalism as an aesthetic, but there are so many brutalst buildings that make me want to clean the facade with a pressure washer. Unless the architect designs around the predictable weathering patterns, a brutalist building really needs constant upkeep to keep looking good, just like some other contemporary styles.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
a9h74j 6y ago
In the goofy department ... At one time I imagined having exterior loading doors on condos so you could palletize everything to "pack" and move quickly (albeit using a crane). In a sense the OP shows scaling this up, but it now occurs to me those "loading doors" could be interior, leading to a freight elevator, with hallways large enough for pallets.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  I guess this kind of exists in the form of wide windows. In Europe buildings with narrow stairs often have windows that appear conveniently placed to move large furniture in and out via crane or lift. See also e.g. [1] for various devices advertised for just this purpose. Palletizing everything on top of that would make sense to reduce how long the moving van is required, at the expense of adding more steps. I'm not sure if that's economical. 1 https://www.erento.com/mieten/baumaschinen_baustelle/aufzug_lift_foerderung/moebelaufzug https://www.erento.com/mieten/baumaschinen_baustelle/aufzug_...
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    Interesting ... which leads to a different question. If wealth or resources severely decrease, might people conclude that a lot of furniture is optimally-enough placed where it is, and shift to selling, buying and renting mostly-furnished units?
hirundo 6y ago
"Today, many residents rent semi-permanent space for such homes from land owners, creating an unfortunate side effect: an incomplete form of ownership." That applies to apartment rentals too. But if you can't afford to buy or to get a mortgage it's a feature, and not a trivial one. I lived in a trailer park for many years, and the savings over an apartment made a large difference in my lifestyle and cost of living, which helped me eventually become a home-and-land owner. If someone had "helped" me by preventing this unfortunate side effect of incomplete ownership, it would not have been helpful. My ownership of the trailer but not the land was much better than owning none of it.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Theoretically the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home. Michigan recently had a spate of bad news events where tax commissioners were confiscating and selling homes for even small amounts. Worse the homeowner, if receiving any funds at all from the sale would see a paltry amount. I look at it this way, how long do I keep my home if I stop paying the nearly four thousand a year property tax? I count myself lucky as family friends in up North pay three times that for a postage stamp lot and older home
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Furthermore, there are a bunch of good reasons to rent rather than buy, especially if you're younger. I've lived in the same (owned) house for over 20 years now. But, when I was younger, I moved around. And, even when I ended up living in the same place for about 10 years, I appreciated knowing I could up and move without a whole lot of friction. ADDED: And for most homes, you have maintenance, utilities, etc. (And for a condo, condo fees.) I don't have a mortgage but my house still costs me something >$500/month.
    - sologoub 6y ago
      This only makes sense if the market is flat-to-declining. Otherwise, for then a mostly flat market this is bad financially - when you pay your mortgage, you are also building equity. It’s a small amount initially, but the share grows over time as balance and the required interest shrink. Depending on if you took a 30 or a 15 year loan, the 10 years in one place would have either given you a decent amount of savings or a close to paid home. If you need to move, sell and take your equity less costs of sale, still better than just your rent deposit.
intrasight 6y ago
Isn't it the case that anywhere where mobile homes would make sense it is also the case that land is cheap enough that stacking does not make sense?
nicoffeine 6y ago
Housing is a solved problem in the civilized world. > “We don’t want to have a situation where you can identify the social status of a person by their home address,” says Puchinger. “Wherever you live you’ll find all kinds of social groupings and for us this is one of the most important things we want to do.” Integration and economically mixed communities are the watchwords, along with high-concept modernist architecture that in other European capitals would be the preserve of the well-to-do. Studies have shown that real integration of households of different professions and backgrounds promotes social solidarity, reduces crime, improves health, increases social mobility, avoids ghettoization and alleviates the kind of pervasive moods of detachment, disenfranchisement and alienation that characterise the reputations of some of the UK’s “left behind” areas. https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housing-basic-human-right-vienna-model-social-housing https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ianbicking 6y ago
This is a somewhat similar concept people have been talking about for the homeless: https://www.startribune.com/frey-moves-to-speed-up-indoor-village-for-homeless/572916211/ https://www.startribune.com/frey-moves-to-speed-up-indoor-vi... Basically tiny homes housed inside a large warehouse space, as an alternative to long-term shelters or single-room occupancy hotels for the homeless. It's kind of meant to be affordable, but it's also very much about protecting the community from the homeless and protecting the homeless from each other. There's a big challenge with homeless autonomy and the impact on the community, people who turn away from shelters because of the restrictions and limitations of shelters, but then end up in almost lawless situations which lead to further trauma and don't support recovery. In the warehouse model (if it works!) people still have their own autonomous structures, locked doors, the ability to be somewhat secure. If they want to do drugs in there, then OK, we know deprivation doesn't lead people away from drugs. In the larger area (the enclosing warehouse) there's community expectations, infrastructure, support, and some degree of enforcement. Fairly different of course, but also an attempt to balance autonomy with infrastructure.
- vyrotek 6y ago
  An interesting idea. I couldn't help start to imagine what it would look like and the I found myself thinking about a large shopping mall which recently closed in Arizona. One could create quite a community inside.
setgree 6y ago
The key idea here is modular housing; vertical trailer parks are one way to make that happen. A post I like on the subject: “ Movable Housing for Scalable Cities” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (@yudkowsky here): https://steemit.com/startup/@eliezeryudkowsky/movable-housing-for-scalable-cities https://steemit.com/startup/@eliezeryudkowsky/movable-housin... The point about modular homes being fundamentally a solution for loneliness really hits home during a pandemic when many of my friends and family are literally unreachable.
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
There's something interesting here; I can't quite put my finger on what it is yet; but it would seem to me that generally speaking, there are two methods to construct apartment buildings: 1) The conventional method, which also includes the use of 3D printers... 2) Pre-making the apartments or housing sections, then lifting them into place with a crane. Pattern #2 doesn't just include mobile homes; it includes everything pre-made that can be hoisted into place via a crane. It would seem to me that via Pattern #2, apartment complexes could be created at scale, more cheaply and efficiently than via Pattern #1, with a lot of room for future innovations in this area... In other words, there will be a future Elon Musk style innovator, maybe several, of the second construction method...
tomatohs 6y ago
Jeff Wilson, the founder of Kasita, is working on a new housing startup called "Jupe." His pitch to me was that Jupe solves a lot of the zoning and foundation problems he encountered while selling Kasitas. https://jupe.com/ https://jupe.com/
goatcode 6y ago
Move to a trailer park to get away from the city, and move into a junkier version of a city. Living the dream.
blackrock 6y ago
Holy crap. This sounds like a dystopian nightmare on Earth. Just build up more high rise apartments and condominiums. Crash the damn housing market. Homes should be made for living, not for investment and speculation vehicles. Then interconnect everything with high speed rails and subway systems. There is plenty of land and resources in America for everyone. The only thing stopping us from making this utopian future a reality for all, is sheer greed, from the billionaires at the top that wants to keep you poor and divided.

95 points by thread_id 6y ago

pstuart 6y ago

It's such a bad idea on so many levels.

tromp 6y ago
I see what you did there:-)

tmikaeld 6y ago

The Kasita modules doesn't look that bad, it's very thought through. Especially the construction, which they say is like car assembly to dramatically get the costs down. I'm guessing, like any housing, power, water and drain would need to be connected.

ianai 6y ago
Yes the Kasita does look better. Would still hate moving stuff up that many flights of stairs though.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  In any modern building it'd be required to have elevators for ADA compliance...
Ekaros 6y ago
It's not too complicated. We could expand from how cruise ships are build. Where the cabins come in ready build modules and then their water, drain, power and AC is connected from outside. In shared shaft running next to the unit. So just give a option to chain a few of these units together.

nostromo 6y ago

Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo has some similarities to this concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower > The building is composed of two interconnected concrete towers, respectively eleven and thirteen floors, which house 140 self-contained prefabricated capsules. Capsules can be connected and combined to create larger spaces. Each capsule is connected to one of the two main shafts only by four high-tension bolts and is designed to be replaceable. The idea didn’t catch on however, and the building will likely be replaced in the coming years.

nickpinkston 6y ago
I came here to mention Nakagin. I really hope they save it. It's such a unique building. At least from the outside, I here it's not great to live in though. A more livable / less flexible/modular metabolist building is Habitat 67 in Montreal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

everyone 6y ago

For some wacky blue sky visions of this sort of thing check out Archigram's plug in city. https://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-city-peter-cook-archigram https://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-cit...

dr_dshiv 6y ago

In Amsterdam, the qbic hotel takes a somewhat related approach. It standardizes the hotel room inside of an existing multitenet building room (ie, it is appropriate for buildings not built to be hotels). "The Cubi is a cube shaped module which can be put together like an Ikea kit inside the room. It contains the bed (with that infamous high quality Hästens mattress), a LCD TV screen, a work-and-dine set, Philippe Starck bathroom elements, safe and high speed internet connection." I'm always curious about radically cheaper ways of providing quality living.

eecc 6y ago
Some student home complexes in Amsterdam are built out of (I suppose new) modified shipping containers. I think it’s a brilliant design, particularly suited for rapid assembly and relocation. Ideal for disaster relief

lordnacho 6y ago

Once self driving cars are a thing it might make sense to have towers like this. You can work while travelling to a new view each day.

musingsole 6y ago
Self-driving RVs have been a killer dream of mine for a while now. I hate driving, but if a robot were doing it and I could hang out as if in a train, that would be awesome. The idea of your home being a container and the autodriver being a rented service just makes it better.
- jlokier 6y ago
  If you're up for a rented autodriver service, maybe you don't have to wait for self-driving AIs. Perhaps you can rent from a pool of human drivers, doing remote driving when you want to move, the same way they fly drones.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Is an RV in a large multi-level parking structure with utility hookups a better concept? Almost like a vertical campsite. I feel like doing it with actual trailers is a bit more unwieldy.

vineyardmike 6y ago
This seems to be what the original idea was

rwmj 6y ago

The Stewart Brand book How Buildings Learn mentioned in the article is excellent! The only architecture book you need. There's also a 1997 BBC TV series by the author on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxFD-wxU4CoNb-gCM0-P9fjJchwUIfkep https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxFD-wxU4...)

a9h74j 6y ago
Brand's book so rightly emphasizes getting the ordering of layers right, IIRC. If you are familiar with condo law, stacking mobile homes (per the article) could be seen as absolutely minimizing "limited common element" and coupled utilities. -- So in a sense the book and the article match up there as well.

ianai 6y ago

They’ve got to find a way to make it not look dystopian and a place you’d like to be. A huge “nakedly” concrete structure doesn’t have much appeal. Some designs I’ve seen look like they have no guard rails, for instance. Maybe it’d look better if it looked more developed. Or if it went a fully integrated direction like a traditional high rise.

asimilator 6y ago
Some people like the brutalist aesthetic.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Add some neon signs and play electronic music in the background, and you’ll it’ll become a #Cyberpunk hotspot on Instagram.
- ianai 6y ago
  Do they like it in 20 years after the concrete is all chipped and looks set to fall apart?
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Brutalism largely outlived its welcome for a number of reasons. But one of them is that it literally does not age well.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    I like brutalism as an aesthetic, but there are so many brutalst buildings that make me want to clean the facade with a pressure washer. Unless the architect designs around the predictable weathering patterns, a brutalist building really needs constant upkeep to keep looking good, just like some other contemporary styles.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago

a9h74j 6y ago

In the goofy department ... At one time I imagined having exterior loading doors on condos so you could palletize everything to "pack" and move quickly (albeit using a crane). In a sense the OP shows scaling this up, but it now occurs to me those "loading doors" could be interior, leading to a freight elevator, with hallways large enough for pallets.

wongarsu 6y ago
I guess this kind of exists in the form of wide windows. In Europe buildings with narrow stairs often have windows that appear conveniently placed to move large furniture in and out via crane or lift. See also e.g. [1] for various devices advertised for just this purpose. Palletizing everything on top of that would make sense to reduce how long the moving van is required, at the expense of adding more steps. I'm not sure if that's economical. 1 https://www.erento.com/mieten/baumaschinen_baustelle/aufzug_lift_foerderung/moebelaufzug https://www.erento.com/mieten/baumaschinen_baustelle/aufzug_...
- a9h74j 6y ago
  Interesting ... which leads to a different question. If wealth or resources severely decrease, might people conclude that a lot of furniture is optimally-enough placed where it is, and shift to selling, buying and renting mostly-furnished units?

hirundo 6y ago

"Today, many residents rent semi-permanent space for such homes from land owners, creating an unfortunate side effect: an incomplete form of ownership." That applies to apartment rentals too. But if you can't afford to buy or to get a mortgage it's a feature, and not a trivial one. I lived in a trailer park for many years, and the savings over an apartment made a large difference in my lifestyle and cost of living, which helped me eventually become a home-and-land owner. If someone had "helped" me by preventing this unfortunate side effect of incomplete ownership, it would not have been helpful. My ownership of the trailer but not the land was much better than owning none of it.

Shivetya 6y ago
Theoretically the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home. Michigan recently had a spate of bad news events where tax commissioners were confiscating and selling homes for even small amounts. Worse the homeowner, if receiving any funds at all from the sale would see a paltry amount. I look at it this way, how long do I keep my home if I stop paying the nearly four thousand a year property tax? I count myself lucky as family friends in up North pay three times that for a postage stamp lot and older home
- ghaff 6y ago
  Furthermore, there are a bunch of good reasons to rent rather than buy, especially if you're younger. I've lived in the same (owned) house for over 20 years now. But, when I was younger, I moved around. And, even when I ended up living in the same place for about 10 years, I appreciated knowing I could up and move without a whole lot of friction. ADDED: And for most homes, you have maintenance, utilities, etc. (And for a condo, condo fees.) I don't have a mortgage but my house still costs me something >$500/month.
  - sologoub 6y ago
    This only makes sense if the market is flat-to-declining. Otherwise, for then a mostly flat market this is bad financially - when you pay your mortgage, you are also building equity. It’s a small amount initially, but the share grows over time as balance and the required interest shrink. Depending on if you took a 30 or a 15 year loan, the 10 years in one place would have either given you a decent amount of savings or a close to paid home. If you need to move, sell and take your equity less costs of sale, still better than just your rent deposit.

intrasight 6y ago

Isn't it the case that anywhere where mobile homes would make sense it is also the case that land is cheap enough that stacking does not make sense?

nicoffeine 6y ago

Housing is a solved problem in the civilized world. > “We don’t want to have a situation where you can identify the social status of a person by their home address,” says Puchinger. “Wherever you live you’ll find all kinds of social groupings and for us this is one of the most important things we want to do.” Integration and economically mixed communities are the watchwords, along with high-concept modernist architecture that in other European capitals would be the preserve of the well-to-do. Studies have shown that real integration of households of different professions and backgrounds promotes social solidarity, reduces crime, improves health, increases social mobility, avoids ghettoization and alleviates the kind of pervasive moods of detachment, disenfranchisement and alienation that characterise the reputations of some of the UK’s “left behind” areas. https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housing-basic-human-right-vienna-model-social-housing https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ianbicking 6y ago

This is a somewhat similar concept people have been talking about for the homeless: https://www.startribune.com/frey-moves-to-speed-up-indoor-village-for-homeless/572916211/ https://www.startribune.com/frey-moves-to-speed-up-indoor-vi... Basically tiny homes housed inside a large warehouse space, as an alternative to long-term shelters or single-room occupancy hotels for the homeless. It's kind of meant to be affordable, but it's also very much about protecting the community from the homeless and protecting the homeless from each other. There's a big challenge with homeless autonomy and the impact on the community, people who turn away from shelters because of the restrictions and limitations of shelters, but then end up in almost lawless situations which lead to further trauma and don't support recovery. In the warehouse model (if it works!) people still have their own autonomous structures, locked doors, the ability to be somewhat secure. If they want to do drugs in there, then OK, we know deprivation doesn't lead people away from drugs. In the larger area (the enclosing warehouse) there's community expectations, infrastructure, support, and some degree of enforcement. Fairly different of course, but also an attempt to balance autonomy with infrastructure.

vyrotek 6y ago
An interesting idea. I couldn't help start to imagine what it would look like and the I found myself thinking about a large shopping mall which recently closed in Arizona. One could create quite a community inside.

setgree 6y ago

The key idea here is modular housing; vertical trailer parks are one way to make that happen. A post I like on the subject: “ Movable Housing for Scalable Cities” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (@yudkowsky here): https://steemit.com/startup/@eliezeryudkowsky/movable-housing-for-scalable-cities https://steemit.com/startup/@eliezeryudkowsky/movable-housin... The point about modular homes being fundamentally a solution for loneliness really hits home during a pandemic when many of my friends and family are literally unreachable.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

There's something interesting here; I can't quite put my finger on what it is yet; but it would seem to me that generally speaking, there are two methods to construct apartment buildings: 1) The conventional method, which also includes the use of 3D printers... 2) Pre-making the apartments or housing sections, then lifting them into place with a crane. Pattern #2 doesn't just include mobile homes; it includes everything pre-made that can be hoisted into place via a crane. It would seem to me that via Pattern #2, apartment complexes could be created at scale, more cheaply and efficiently than via Pattern #1, with a lot of room for future innovations in this area... In other words, there will be a future Elon Musk style innovator, maybe several, of the second construction method...

tomatohs 6y ago

Jeff Wilson, the founder of Kasita, is working on a new housing startup called "Jupe." His pitch to me was that Jupe solves a lot of the zoning and foundation problems he encountered while selling Kasitas. https://jupe.com/ https://jupe.com/

goatcode 6y ago

Move to a trailer park to get away from the city, and move into a junkier version of a city. Living the dream.

blackrock 6y ago

Holy crap. This sounds like a dystopian nightmare on Earth. Just build up more high rise apartments and condominiums. Crash the damn housing market. Homes should be made for living, not for investment and speculation vehicles. Then interconnect everything with high speed rails and subway systems. There is plenty of land and resources in America for everyone. The only thing stopping us from making this utopian future a reality for all, is sheer greed, from the billionaires at the top that wants to keep you poor and divided.