[Discuss] Open Source Ecological Housing

Emilio Velis contacto at emiliovelis.com
Wed Jun 29 21:55:52 UTC 2016


Catarina: I'm part of the design team of the Amazon Floating Fab Lab
project, which is pretty big and is pretty much onto that idea. If you have
people (perhaps from OSE) interested in a floating surface and
infrastructure, maybe we can talk! We've been working for a couple of years
now and we're moving towards prototyping and manufacturing pretty soon.

On 29 June 2016 at 14:43, Catarina Mota <catarina at openmaterials.org> wrote:

>
>> Sure, and I don't pretend to be all that good at marketing copy, I've
>> just been studying it lately because I realized I wasn't any good at all. I
>> think I am pretty good at recognizing when a builder is having a hard time
>> switching to marketing because I have a lot of subjective experience with
>> that.
>>
>
> I agree with what you said. My instinct was also to put the buildings and
> campaign scope (what it's funding) at the top, but kickstarter told us to
> move it down... Anyway, I'm just a nerd and don't know the first thing
> about marketing :D
>
>
>> That get-in-then-build-out approach is something I'm extremely interested
>> in. It's counter intuitive to most people. Typically, the options are to
>> buy what everyone else is buying or do it totally on your own. If you pick
>> the former, then you need to get financing, and banks only finance large
>> mortgages. If you do it yourself, you're probably limited to a microhouse.
>> I think there's a strong case to be made for the intermediate approach
>> where, because of modular and open source standards, you can spend what
>> would have been your down payment building a small house, and then spend
>> what would have been your yearly mortgage payments expanding it. Or not.
>> That isn't an option with traditional building techniques and communities,
>> but it very well might be with the new stuff. You could tie it in to
>> current events. There's probably something in the pitch that millenials and
>> retirees need a house that's as cheap as a car.
>>
>
> Yes, that is it exactly! This project was born out of our need for a
> "get-in-then-build-out" house - which no one else seemed to be able to
> provide. So, we were just "scratching our own itch" (as Raymond puts it)
> and then realized this make make sense for others as well.
>
>
>>
>> I wonder if you can deconstruct modular houses with the same transaction
>> costs as constructing them. How much can you recover? Do you get the
>> original components back if you start pulling out nails and screws?
>>
>
> We're always changing things around here and did quite a bit of
> deconstruction. The take from that is that you can use pretty much all the
> lumber - even entire modules, without taking them apart - and about 75% of
> the fasteners. But taking things apart and then putting them back together
> is a lot of work. And you can't salvage the foundation, or the compressed
> earth block walls, or any buried pipes (well, you could, but it would suck
> to dig them up). So it's doable - if you need to - but not something I'd
> like to do every year :)
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> 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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