Project Location[edit | edit source]
This section is for proposing, listing, and discussing the build site for the Open House project. The choice of site is interdependent with the choice of housing design and the choice of build strategy. If we employ a mostly on-site build approach we will need portable/temporary buildings of some kind to host an on-site workshop and shelter for the builder(s). If we rely on a mostly off-site prefab approach, we will need two project sites, one for the build and one for the prefabrication. Builder shelter may still be necessary, but kept relatively simple as on-site work will be short. (most-likely something like a yurt or an adapted cargo trailer) There is also a question of whether we would use a permanent build site or a temporary site where the home is deployed for a brief showcase period and later dismantled and redeployed for other exhibits or disposed of in some, hopefully, useful, way.
It seems most likely that temporary sites would be employed for the project and that they will be relatively remote, which would favor home designs that are more self-sufficient in utilities and totally demountable. However, the Pavilion Home concept would be able to make use of urban detritus such as abandoned/repurposed commercial and industrial buildings. This may be the only practical approach for deployment in an urban setting, as open space is rare even for temporary use and it is largely impossible to employ alternative building methods within the typically bureaucratically oppressed city. In some ways, this could actually be a very easy approach because the retrofit of an existing structure is more economical than building one whole. This approach also best suggests the way open source domestic technologies may often be employed in a Mobilist near-future where urban architecture evolves toward increasingly functionally generic architecture or urban landscapes. The more volatile real estate becomes the more impractical specialized architecture becomes.
One very novel possibility for location is the waterfront and sheltered bays. We have the open technology means to create platforms for floating homes or to adapt existing marine structures like barges. There is growing interest in the potential autonomy of the floating home and this is a good way to raise awareness for Global Warming and its threat to coastal communities. We can recruit support from a number of interesting sources simply by adopting this approach. It's a given that the future of coastal living is indeed going to include an expansion in the reliance on floating homes and that the developing world will need to incorporate this technology in adapting to changing environment. There is potentially greater expense in this. One is literally building the space on which everything else is going to be built. But this can also be much cheaper than buying land and perhaps easier to find an urban or semi-urban location for a temporary structure.
