Gizmodo: housing

Paco Cube Contains All Your Living Needs in 3 Square Meters

Elaine Chow — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:30:00 EST

Paco, a prefab mobile studio, takes all your living needs and puts it into a single three-square-meter (32-square-feet) cube. Designed by Jo Nagasaka, the cube is supposed to be a sleek home away from home.

It's actually pretty amazing what Nagasaka and Schemata Architecture (his firm) have been able to put in such a small space. There's a kitchen, a folding table, secret toilet, umbrella-style shower attachment and sleeping hammock.

The cube also features a "convertible" top, which can open up to allow in ventilation and natural light. While it's not a place you'd quite want to live in forever, it's certainly an incredibly functional get-away. Too bad the price tag is ridiculous: $68,000. [Paco via Cscout Japan]

Concrete-Jet Printer Gets Caterpillar Funding: Print-Out Houses on the Way

Kit Eaton — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:15:00 EDT

Check out this lengthy vid: it shows how one day you may just call-in giant robots to print out a new home based on a CAD model. Research into the concrete-jet printer is being carried out by USC, and their technology can already build up complex concrete structures using technology that's half-CNC machine and half inkjet-like. They've just got funding from Caterpillar to further the research. Amazing stuff, especially when the team says it should be eventually be able to put together a 2,000-square-foot, two storey home in just a day, with all the wiring and plumbing automatically inserted too. Even NASA is interested, as this may be a good solution for building Moonbases. [The Register via Bot Junkie]

Infinity Tower to Twist by 90º Over Dubai Marina

AddyDugdale — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:12:33 EST

For the record, I would like to state that I'm really bored of these outsized erections popping up all over the Arabian Peninsula. This one is going up in the Dubai Marina. It's called the Infinity Tower (because that is how long it seems that we have been covering these giant penile substitutes that are currently littering the Middle East) and its USP is that it twists 90º. This is the blurb on the 1,000-foot, 80-story, twisted monstrosity.

Imagine a tower whose unique spiralling design reflects the boundless energies and ever-changing shapes of the deserts, winds and seas that surround it.

I think that the Infinity Tower reflects the boundless money and ever-burgeoning profits of foreign contractors as they reap the seemingly never-ending petro-dollars of Dubai and its neighbors' ruling families. Hot dang, there goes my invite to the opening of the Burj Dubai. [Infinity Tower]

Off the Grid: Treehouse Concept

Charlie White — Fri, 12 May 2006 09:26:48 EDT

British design firm Sybarite aims to develop a modular treehouse concept that the company says could encourage a more organic approach to country living. The plan is to pre-fabricate modules of the house, quickly assembling a dwelling with up to five bedrooms.

Situated just above the tree top level, the idea is based on a green concept, where lightweight recyclable materials are used in its construction, and underneath the house, there will be what the company calls "undulating kinetic baffles" that use wind power to generate electricity. Even though this house could be built in less than two weeks, if they can just get this thing built in our lifetimes, we can have that treehouse we always wanted as kids.

Concept Tree House [Sybarite, via BornRich]