2011Concept
Shelter is essential, and a house is a defining asset, but for the very poor, any material advantage has got to allow for incremental acquisition, serve multiple ends, and enable a radical variety of unanticipated uses.
We scale into the challenge thus:
What $20 invention would alter the landscape of both low-cost housing, and the means for attaining it?
While a basic dwelling can take many forms, there are structural, organizational, and aggregational advantages to a rectangular enclosure, and a cube more so with congruent side, floor, and roof dimensions.What $20 invention would alter the landscape of both low-cost housing, and the means for attaining it?
We subdivide those square sides into three 1m x 3m panels, because many materials come in a meter-wide extrusions and can therefore be integrated into our system, and because a door height requires a two-meter high opening.
Surface Performance
The key to a $300 house is a $60 wall. And a $60 wall requires a building system that combines weather protection, load bearing, shear reinforcement and elective areas for door and window openings. Block walls do all this by granular stacking, rebar reinforcement, and cement bonding; typical frame construction combines plywood or metal sheeting for closure and shear with stick reinforcement.
Multivalence
The DAY-TRAY will combine to form a home for $300: a NICECUBE. But its more profound value may lie to either side of that assembly, in the many roles it can play before, during, and after its deployment as housing.
Life-Cycle
A single tray, at less than $20, will provide a means of transport and storage. It can serve as a lean-to or a BBQ. Three trays is both a roof overhead, a corral for livestock. Fifteen trays for a basic dwelling; twenty-five for an extended family’s permanent home.
Flexible Connections
Every time three DAY-TRAYS are consolidated into a 3m x 3m square, a side of the NICECUBE is complete and useful as temporary shelter as the other sides are financed and assembled.