5 ms·

I've long pondered the notion of making tiny homes out of cardboard -- it seems to be an abundant raw resource. The thought gets more fanciful with the notion o

I've long pondered the notion of making tiny homes out of cardboard -- it seems to be an abundant raw resource. The thought gets more fanciful with the notion of doing this for the homeless population (but among other issues requires appropriate locations to put them).

fennecfoxen 5y ago
The early days of Big Cardboard, when it was new and patented and being churned out of factories in downtown Brooklyn, saw a lot of early success in trains, where sturdy cardboard interior panels could replace wood, for a fraction of the weight. I’m not sure permanent home installs are better off using it instead of, say, plywood, unless you’re planning to move this home around.
pochekailov 5y ago
The houses in USA are already made almost from the cardboard. You can not call a bunch of "two by four" wooden planks nailed together a modern home. If we do really care about people not being homeless as we claim we do, I suggest as a first step we cancel all the construction regulations. Temporarily. For the next 20 years. Then, extend the cancellation indefinitely.
- djmips 5y ago
  The sheetrock probably helps prevent the quick spread of fire. So it's not exactly cardboard.
  - pochekailov 5y ago
    I really like your sarcasm.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    There was a product called Beaverboard that predated sheetrock which is essentially a 1/2" thick panel of cardboard fiber.
- williamtrask 5y ago
  There are probably less deadly ways to help the homeless.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    I think the core physical concerns could be addressed (in a different dialog). Disclaimer: I've been homeless (never on the streets) and my mother died on the streets of SF. The bigger concern is where do you park these people? The first qualifier that comes into play is: is the homeless person temporarily distressed or are they "broken" for life. In the disclaimer I gave I was of the former category and my mother was among the latter. So this solution is meant for the latter group -- the ones who are never going to "contribute to society" again. This qualifier isn't meant to punish or demean, but to recognize that it's not necessarily cruel to move these people to remote locations (where land is cheap). But to do so humanely requires that the housing be better than tarp on a cyclone fence and affordable. I still think cardboard could be repurposed in a safe and economical manner to aid in providing this shelter. Just like nobody would build a house how of wood without providing environmental protection this would do so as well. Creating such homesteads would be far more cost efficient than the current efforts to sweep homelessness under the carpet. The more intriguing question is: if one could create "free" communities such as these how would abuse of same be minimized? That is, ensuring that only the truly needy be admitted. And more interestingly, how could one establish communities like this that "bad people" don't "take over" the complex. I'm stupidly hopeful enough to believe that these are problems that have satisfactory answers but I don't have them at the moment.
  - pochekailov 5y ago
    Unfortunately, I do not see how. As we all know, N_homeless = N_people - N_homes. Current regulations effectively forbid to build horrible ugly high-rises that can house 50,000 people in each. Currently, it is only profitable to build luxury houses that nobody can afford. However, the horrible ugly high-rise has the only one advantage: it is cheap, and everyone can afford it. Even a homeless guy that manage to found a crappy -paying job through his heroic effort. I only see one way to end homelessness: make housing 20x cheaper than it is now. And that would not be possible without cancelling all housing regulations.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  2x6 framing is much more common, to allow for thicker (and thus more effective) insulation. TBH, it is incredibly amusing that you diss the (well regulated) wood framing and then propose eliminating all construction regulation. The cost of building homes and other buildings isn't significantly impacted by regulation at this point; most structural elements are standardized such that it would cost more to use non-conventional materials. Some significant costs are simply fixed. Grading land, digging basements, foundation, well and septic in rural areas- these things could only be done cheaper in the short term. Taking shortcuts in almost all cases would wind up with a building needing significantly costly repairs much earlier and represent a terrible ROI.
  - pochekailov 5y ago
    I was trying to argue that building from wood framing is a terrible idea to start with. Wood easily degenerates with time, and without proper maintenance, won't survive even 200 years. Besides, even a car can get through the wall if it runs into the building. The city I grew up in (Kiev) builds only from reinforced concrete, bricks and stone. Somehow, the 2-bedroom apartment can cost 50-100K and such building can still be profitable. Another data point: the commercial building are build with the concrete. Therefore, I think that the materials price is not a significant cost in the house; neither is the labor. Current average US home price is $400K; or 5-10 average yearly salary in the area. Other countries build houses as cheap as 30-40K from high-quality materials. This brings me to the conclusion, that the difference must be the regulations, either zoning or construction. BTW, in many countries, if a person can't afford to buy a house, they buy a land and build themselves. My current understanding that in US you need licenses to perform almost any construction work.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      There are some interesting observations there, but I think there's more to it. Several sources say about 30-40% of the cost of a home in the US is labor. Just the bill for the foundation and driveway for a typical US home is $7-15k (or more), so a $30-40k home seems not possible here.
sockfish 5y ago
This experiment has been done in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in the 90s. It gained a tonne of publicity but it did not end up getting widely adopted. Most homeless people (understandably) feared getting stigmatized if they were spotted sleeping in one. https://museumrotterdam.nl/collectie/item/71471-1-3 https://museumrotterdam.nl/collectie/item/71471-1-3
- frostburg 5y ago
  Those looking like tented coffins probably didn't help. I'd really like one of the Fuller ones (from the Fifties!) I mentioned above.
frostburg 5y ago
Buckminster Fuller designed beautiful cardboard dome-houses for the 1954 Milan Triennale (the pre-cut components were shipped flat by plane). I don't have great photos at hand, but here's something: https://imgur.com/a/rTYfJRE https://imgur.com/a/rTYfJRE
myself248 5y ago
Moisture control is a huge part of any housing envelope's job. Vapor barriers and thermal breaks (because any temperature change is also a relative humidity change) can make or break a home design, and plenty of attractive concepts fall flat when the seasons change and suddenly there's a thermal gradient leading to condensation in the wall that provides an ideal growth medium for microbes. Moist paper = food. Fire resistance is another biggie, and cardboard isn't good at that either. By the time you've treated it with fire-retardants, you've drenched the whole area in PFAs and could've just used sheetrock or something that's inherently inert.
adfm 5y ago
Moisture and insulation are key issues when building any shelter meant to last. Keep that in mind when you're inspired by projects like Cardborigami[^1] or The Hexayurt[^2]. If you're looking to build your own, check out the Miura-ori-inspired zippered tubes[^3]. [^1]: https://www.cardborigami.org/ https://www.cardborigami.org/ [^2]: http://hexayurt.com/ http://hexayurt.com/ [^3]: https://ce.gatech.edu/news/researchers-develop-new-zippered-origami-tubes-fold-flat-deploy-easily-and-still-hold https://ce.gatech.edu/news/researchers-develop-new-zippered-...

fennecfoxen 5y ago

The early days of Big Cardboard, when it was new and patented and being churned out of factories in downtown Brooklyn, saw a lot of early success in trains, where sturdy cardboard interior panels could replace wood, for a fraction of the weight. I’m not sure permanent home installs are better off using it instead of, say, plywood, unless you’re planning to move this home around.

pochekailov 5y ago

The houses in USA are already made almost from the cardboard. You can not call a bunch of "two by four" wooden planks nailed together a modern home. If we do really care about people not being homeless as we claim we do, I suggest as a first step we cancel all the construction regulations. Temporarily. For the next 20 years. Then, extend the cancellation indefinitely.

djmips 5y ago
The sheetrock probably helps prevent the quick spread of fire. So it's not exactly cardboard.
- pochekailov 5y ago
  I really like your sarcasm.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  There was a product called Beaverboard that predated sheetrock which is essentially a 1/2" thick panel of cardboard fiber.
williamtrask 5y ago
There are probably less deadly ways to help the homeless.
- pstuart 5y ago
  I think the core physical concerns could be addressed (in a different dialog). Disclaimer: I've been homeless (never on the streets) and my mother died on the streets of SF. The bigger concern is where do you park these people? The first qualifier that comes into play is: is the homeless person temporarily distressed or are they "broken" for life. In the disclaimer I gave I was of the former category and my mother was among the latter. So this solution is meant for the latter group -- the ones who are never going to "contribute to society" again. This qualifier isn't meant to punish or demean, but to recognize that it's not necessarily cruel to move these people to remote locations (where land is cheap). But to do so humanely requires that the housing be better than tarp on a cyclone fence and affordable. I still think cardboard could be repurposed in a safe and economical manner to aid in providing this shelter. Just like nobody would build a house how of wood without providing environmental protection this would do so as well. Creating such homesteads would be far more cost efficient than the current efforts to sweep homelessness under the carpet. The more intriguing question is: if one could create "free" communities such as these how would abuse of same be minimized? That is, ensuring that only the truly needy be admitted. And more interestingly, how could one establish communities like this that "bad people" don't "take over" the complex. I'm stupidly hopeful enough to believe that these are problems that have satisfactory answers but I don't have them at the moment.
- pochekailov 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I do not see how. As we all know, N_homeless = N_people - N_homes. Current regulations effectively forbid to build horrible ugly high-rises that can house 50,000 people in each. Currently, it is only profitable to build luxury houses that nobody can afford. However, the horrible ugly high-rise has the only one advantage: it is cheap, and everyone can afford it. Even a homeless guy that manage to found a crappy -paying job through his heroic effort. I only see one way to end homelessness: make housing 20x cheaper than it is now. And that would not be possible without cancelling all housing regulations.
zdragnar 5y ago
2x6 framing is much more common, to allow for thicker (and thus more effective) insulation. TBH, it is incredibly amusing that you diss the (well regulated) wood framing and then propose eliminating all construction regulation. The cost of building homes and other buildings isn't significantly impacted by regulation at this point; most structural elements are standardized such that it would cost more to use non-conventional materials. Some significant costs are simply fixed. Grading land, digging basements, foundation, well and septic in rural areas- these things could only be done cheaper in the short term. Taking shortcuts in almost all cases would wind up with a building needing significantly costly repairs much earlier and represent a terrible ROI.
- pochekailov 5y ago
  I was trying to argue that building from wood framing is a terrible idea to start with. Wood easily degenerates with time, and without proper maintenance, won't survive even 200 years. Besides, even a car can get through the wall if it runs into the building. The city I grew up in (Kiev) builds only from reinforced concrete, bricks and stone. Somehow, the 2-bedroom apartment can cost 50-100K and such building can still be profitable. Another data point: the commercial building are build with the concrete. Therefore, I think that the materials price is not a significant cost in the house; neither is the labor. Current average US home price is $400K; or 5-10 average yearly salary in the area. Other countries build houses as cheap as 30-40K from high-quality materials. This brings me to the conclusion, that the difference must be the regulations, either zoning or construction. BTW, in many countries, if a person can't afford to buy a house, they buy a land and build themselves. My current understanding that in US you need licenses to perform almost any construction work.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    There are some interesting observations there, but I think there's more to it. Several sources say about 30-40% of the cost of a home in the US is labor. Just the bill for the foundation and driveway for a typical US home is $7-15k (or more), so a $30-40k home seems not possible here.

sockfish 5y ago

This experiment has been done in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in the 90s. It gained a tonne of publicity but it did not end up getting widely adopted. Most homeless people (understandably) feared getting stigmatized if they were spotted sleeping in one. https://museumrotterdam.nl/collectie/item/71471-1-3 https://museumrotterdam.nl/collectie/item/71471-1-3

frostburg 5y ago
Those looking like tented coffins probably didn't help. I'd really like one of the Fuller ones (from the Fifties!) I mentioned above.

frostburg 5y ago

Buckminster Fuller designed beautiful cardboard dome-houses for the 1954 Milan Triennale (the pre-cut components were shipped flat by plane). I don't have great photos at hand, but here's something: https://imgur.com/a/rTYfJRE https://imgur.com/a/rTYfJRE

myself248 5y ago

Moisture control is a huge part of any housing envelope's job. Vapor barriers and thermal breaks (because any temperature change is also a relative humidity change) can make or break a home design, and plenty of attractive concepts fall flat when the seasons change and suddenly there's a thermal gradient leading to condensation in the wall that provides an ideal growth medium for microbes. Moist paper = food. Fire resistance is another biggie, and cardboard isn't good at that either. By the time you've treated it with fire-retardants, you've drenched the whole area in PFAs and could've just used sheetrock or something that's inherently inert.

adfm 5y ago

Moisture and insulation are key issues when building any shelter meant to last. Keep that in mind when you're inspired by projects like Cardborigami[^1] or The Hexayurt[^2]. If you're looking to build your own, check out the Miura-ori-inspired zippered tubes[^3]. [^1]: https://www.cardborigami.org/ https://www.cardborigami.org/ [^2]: http://hexayurt.com/ http://hexayurt.com/ [^3]: https://ce.gatech.edu/news/researchers-develop-new-zippered-origami-tubes-fold-flat-deploy-easily-and-still-hold https://ce.gatech.edu/news/researchers-develop-new-zippered-...