[Discuss] Open Source Ecological Housing

Wed Jun 29 20:01:13 UTC 2016

Andrew: wow, I love your project! And now I really, really want a floating
hackerspace! We're super sleep-deprived at the moment, but perhaps we could
chat off-list next week about some possible avenues for collaboration?

Emilio: nice, I look forward to hearing more about it.

Matt: thank so much for your detailed feedback - it's really useful. I'll
go through it in the detail to see what changes we could implement at this
point. In the mean time, a couple clarifications:

- The order of the text was suggested by the kickstarter reviewer team. We
assumed they know more about this than we do - but perhaps what is usually
right is not necessarily right for us... I'll investigate further.

- The cost issue is a bit more complicated. You're absolutely right in what
you said. The bigger issue is that there is a lack of "starter homes" in
the market at the moment. The choices seem to be between the McMansion and
the Tiny Home - either get in serious debt or go with a small home.
Personally, I'm in-between those two options: I don't have $360k, but I
also don't want to live in a tiny home forever (I lived in mini
houses/apartments for 15 years). I want something small and affordable to
start with - but that can be expanded. Most tiny homes are not designed for
that.

A couple interesting links about this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/housing-supply-crisis-is-looming-2016-3

https://www.ted.com/talks/alejandro_aravena_my_architectural_philosophy_bring_the_community_into_the_process?language=en

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Emilio Velis <contacto at emiliovelis.com>
wrote:

> So I have this project I'm interested in making happen here in El Salvador
> and am getting a lot of people involved to fund it and make it happen. Very
> much worth it.
>
> I'll stay on the loop and keep you posted soon! Thanks for sharing!
>
> On 29 June 2016 at 13:42, Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Here are thoughts as they occur to me:
>>
>> I feel like you should lead with this stuff.
>> http://openbuildinginstitute.org/buildings/
>> It's easy to get excited about the technical details you had to get
>> working to make the project functional, but customers aren't going to care
>> until they want to live there. So tell them stories about how nice it is to
>> live there.
>>
>> I'm interested in the infrastructure necessary to get a serious open
>> source hardware project working, but not many other people are. There are a
>> lot more people interested in cheap, efficient microhouses, and a whole lot
>> more people interested in green tech, and even more interested in small
>> living spaces.
>>
>> Don't use a screenshot of the kickstarter video with "play" on it as a
>> link to kickstarter. If it looks like a button to start a video it should
>> start an embedded video.
>>
>> To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the kickstarter campaign is
>> funding. You already build the house, and you don't seem to be trying to
>> build a bunch more houses, like for a community in Africa or something. I
>> feel like maybe "you're funding a source of all the knowledge and skills
>> you need to design and build a house yourself" is the primary value
>> proposition, but it's kind of buried. Oh, okay, there it is. The list of
>> what the campaign is funding is a quick set of bullet points at the end of
>> the video. It's also buried in the about/roadmap and contribute/support us
>> on kickstarter sections of the website. I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere
>> on the kickstarter page too. It seems like it should be a lot easier to
>> find out exactly what is being funded.
>>
>> Do you think the open source documentation will be detailed enough for
>> someone to build everything without paying to learn how? The implication
>> from the description is that people are expected to offset the cost of the
>> build by charging people for the knowledge they acquire during the build.
>> I'd be interested in following how general contractors and builders
>> incorporate this as an option in their business.
>>
>> Also, in general, it feels like you could summarize and cut the text down
>> by at least 50%. The diagrams take up a lot of space but don't necessarily
>> illuminate much. The "we offer/you can" diagram takes a couple minutes to
>> understand (the fonts aren't helping).
>>
>> The video's already shot, but as I parse out what's being funded it
>> struck me that you might not want to characterize your location as "in the
>> middle of nowhere" when a big part of the plan is to build a facility
>> people are supposed to travel to and use. Maybe something like "the perfect
>> place to live efficiently" or "the opposite of NYC" would be better
>> marketing. Along similar lines, it seems unnecessarily misleading to
>> compare the cost of your microhouse to an average $360K house. It took
>> about 30 seconds of googling to find that the costs you're estimating are
>> right in line with microhouses
>> https://padtinyhouses.com/how-much-does-a-tiny-house-cost/ and I doubt
>> you're poaching anyone who was planning to build a brand new 2000 square
>> foot McMansion to switch to building a microhouse. Even if you do get some
>> of them, they'll compare yours to other microhouses. Oh man, and you buried
>> something towards the end to the effect that you're crowdfunding part of
>> the costs and bootstrapping the rest; that should be near the top!
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 8:53 PM, Catarina Mota <catarinamfmota at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear fellow open sourcerers,
>>>
>>> We just launched a new project that has been many years in the making.
>>> It's called the Open Building Institute and it's an open source initiative
>>> to make affordable eco-housing accessible to everyone. The project is
>>> based on collaborative rapid-builds, a modular system, and open source
>>> machines.
>>>
>>> Check it out: http://openbuildinginstitute.org
>>>
>>> Any feedback and collaborations will be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Catarina
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
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