November 26, 2017

The building unfolds.

27 comments:

mockturtle said...

I like the concept but the product looks like shit. Can it be refolded and moved? That would be a plus for me, being nomadic by nature.

Michael K said...

I wonder how much this costs. It would also be interesting to learn if it can be folded up again as a temporary structure.

I was once seriously considering a factor built house for some property in Washington State. The company built a lot of houses for Alaska and they were barged up there because of the short season for construction.

I decided not to do it because Washington charged sales tax on the factory built house.

Luke Lea said...

I could use one of those in my backyard but I bet they cost a bundle.

john said...

I didnt see any plumbing. Maybe since they are elevated you can just shit through a hole.

tcrosse said...

As the building unfolds, the plot thickens.

cf said...

Oh my goodness, I am in love.

The 21st century continues its express elevator trajectory with such ease and grace, & we get to be witness.

Sebastian said...

Y'all are jumping the gun, judging superficial issues like quality of design, refoldability, and so on.

The question is, how diverse was the engineering team?

Bunch of lego-loving tinkerers, I suspect. Gives off whiffs of white male supremacy.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Awesome and bit depressing.

Ann Althouse said...

Yeah, it's simultaneously very good and very bad. Almost human.

Wince said...

Sometimes the English language aphorism comes alive.

"Nonsense on stilts."

L Day said...

It looks like these would require lots of rubber seals and gaskets to stay watertight. Kind of like slideouts on camper trailers. And plumbing would certainly be an issue.

Darrell said...

Since this is British, image having the lorries show up at dawn, then having an entire village of Syrian "refugees" outnumber your native population by Noon. Brilliant!

Darrell said...

Branson will fund it, of course, between motorboating sessions on baps and buns.

Big Mike said...

I don't think I'd care to live in that house or work in that folding office.

Anga2010 said...

That thing would up and fly off in the winds we get here on the South Plains.

Fabi said...

Bucky Fuller approves.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Um. Yeah. What kind of snow load does it have? I believe ours is 60 pounds .

Wind resistance? Plumbing? Bathrooms? Heating? Insulation. PRIVACY????

I can see the concept working as a temporary office in a nice warm, not very windy area. Otherwise. Nope.

DavidD said...

Might be nice to set one up at a campsite.

Reminds me of George Jetson’s car, actually.

Achilles said...

I don't think this will be the way it goes. You will be able to throw up a permanent house that is durable and much nicer for almost no money. The number of human hours spent building a house will approach 0. There will be no reason to port one around really. Lighter than air technology will provide flying houses before these are practical.

Darrell said...

I don't think this will be the way it goes. You will be able to throw up a permanent house that is durable and much nicer for almost no money. The number of human hours spent building a house will approach 0. There will be no reason to port one around really. Lighter than air technology will provide flying houses before these are practical.

Once the Left is fully in charge, of course, and the evil dissenters have been eliminated. Then Cookie, Freder, Ritmo, Inga, ARM, and Howard will usher in a new day where knowing nothing will be seen as a virtue and every Comrade will have everything hisherother's heart desires.

Phil 314 said...

I was expecting it to unfold and become a city-attacking monster robot.

or a car.

Unknown said...

Give it a couple of turns of the technology. Like the first real marketable demand for solar power was in Mongolia to power televisions. Obvious since Some television is better than no television. D@mn capitalists and the regulators being too slow to stop it, protecting the consumer so they can only buy from the state sponsored (monopoly) power system. Because the power companies demanded protection. Amazing what that does to getting the government out of the way, usually. Assemble these on the east side of the Big Island on top of all that lava. Which is truly giant, unpopulated, like the ANWR, with infinite clean rain water, and almost always 22 degrees ,72 f. Better yet, melt it down to glass and build with that. Heaven on earth for the price of energy to re liquefy the lava. Good engineering can solve the rest of the problems. Schools, Parks, Hospitals, infrastructure and a port big enough to import more than enough food from around the world now that the incremental cost of one ton of non-perishables, stuff like irradiated milk is just a few dollars. Nothing like standard building blocks, like standardized containers, and perhaps standardized conveyor belts throughout the new Lava City. And while you're at it, do the same with the Grand Canyon walls where there's more than enough room to put the U.S. population at roughly the density of the Bronx. Before we know it we'll have a planet able to comfortably support 10x the population we have today, more safely, more healthy, better food, more trees, etc. Especially after we bring the Ukraine bread basket online. Nothing like having 10 or so feet of loam to grow forests of food. Have a good day.

n.n said...

They do live among us.

Robert Cook said...

"Once the Left is fully in charge, of course, and the evil dissenters have been eliminated."

Hahaha! You right-wingers are ever paranoid and ever unsatisfied. We've had a variably right-wing government for the past 37 years, (actually for 50 years, excluding the centrist Carter administration), and you believe the leftists are about to accomplish a final, fatal coup! (But then, you nitwits think Hitler was a leftist.)

The Godfather said...

Manufactured housing has been around for a long time -- Sears used to sell prefab houses. It hasn't had a lot of market penetration, in part because the building trades unions and builders organizations have been able to get local governments to impose building codes that the manufactured products can't meet on a cost-competitve basis. Maybe that will change?

BTW I don't want to be in that building when it decides to fold back up.

Anonymous said...

Bunch of lego-loving tinkerers, I suspect. Gives off whiffs of white male supremacy.

11/26/17, 10:29 AM


I'm picking up an even stronger whiff of autism spectrum issues. Which in some ways might be related.

That's been a huge problem in "modern" architecture for the past 100 years.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/09/cult-le-corbusier/

mikee said...

It isn't the opening up that worries me. Tell me that once the building is fully opened up there is some aperture into which a large metal bar is inserted, preventing the house from folding back down into a cube with me still in it.