An Architect Squeezes 24 Rooms Into 344 Square Feet (Video) | Hacker News Reader

An Architect Squeezes 24 Rooms Into 344 Square Feet (Video)

theatlantic.com

Why do reporters constantly feel compelled to use the words "green" and "eco" in every situation they can? This has absolutely nothing to do with ecology, it's simply about optimizing space usage in a city where space is extremely expensive. I guess talking about green stuff sells more.

"the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment"

This is a very good example of "eco-friendly", and the word "green" was never used.

It is eco-friendly for various reasons. Two major ones are:

- The lighting is mostly natural, so there is less energy use - The space required per person, and thus the associated materials, is significantly less than a typical US living space. Further, less space means less heating/cooling requirements.

> the word "green" was never used.

- The title of the video is "The World's Greenest Homes"

- [...] is what shaped architect Gary Chang's green philosophy [...]

People in Hong Kong don't live in tight spaces because they are green but because space is very expensive.

Upvote to you. I'd downvote myself if I could. My bad. I was going off of the video only....

Yes, this isn't by choice, but lack of choice doesn't mean that it is not eco friendly.

Right. The result is in fact probably eco-friendly :) What annoys me a bit is I feel we are trying to force the "eco-friendly" virtue a bit too much on people who are doing nothing more than pursue their own self-interest (which I believe is perfectly fine and desirable).

Isn't eco-friendly also in our own self-interest? ;)

Yes it is. That's all the beauty of capitalism :)

This is a very good example of "eco-friendly", and the word "green" was never used.

Not only is it used on the title card, "World's Greenest Homes", but the narrator uses the term "green" twice as a synonym for "ecology friendly".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=35s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak#t=3m53s

I'd have to "citation needed" many of those claims. There's a lot of material in these layouts. You may not be really losing much in the general case if you simply spread it out a bit more and directly enclose more space. He's got a lot of visible metal and to get the motion that smooth and reliable there's some serious metal in the mechanics as well. I wouldn't be surprised the sum environmental impact of all that metal exceeds quite significantly some wood and drywall. Also, this 344 square feet is much harder to share. There are many people with houses, even in the US, that have less than 344 square feet per person. The natural lighting is nice, but that's nickles and dimes next to the metal usage. Heating and cooling can be a wash, too, there are techniques to heat and cool much larger spaces with minimal energy usage if you're willing to put in the work, but his hands are tied there living in a building he doesn't own. (How's energy-per-person look for a high rise like that? It ought to be pretty good with its superior volume-to-area ratio, as long as it isn't actually leaking air in or out.)

(And compare all this vs. what his neighbor lives in, if we're going to play the environmental card. You know what's better for the environment than all those rooms? Not having all those rooms....)

Just because it's ascetic doesn't automatically translate to it be particularly environmentally low-impact.

Or it may be fantastic. But if we're going to praise this I'd want a more careful accounting. I've noticed people get very careless with their accounting when presented with this sort of thing.

Because "green" and "eco" has an audience. But I'm guessing your question was rhetorical.

this is a great inspirational hack because:

1.) it scratches an important personal itch (having to live his whole life in a crowded urban apartment)

2.) it demonstrates resourcefulness and ingenuity given the (literal!) constraints

3.) the lessons he learned from hacking his own apartment could be used to improve urban living spaces in general

this is a reminder that hacks don't necessarily need to be hosted on github ;)

He should get rid of those CDs so he can have another six rooms.

A stumbling block: effectiveness decreases as the number of concurrent occupants increases

This is something like 2-3 years old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/garden/15hongkong.html?_r=...

It's also a dupe. I've seen this video on HN at least two times previously.

Cool idea, but unless there is some system to lock the walls into place, this would be very dangerous in an earthquake. I've seen a number of high density file systems (same idea but just files) that caused significant safety issues in the recent Christchurch Earthquake.

AFAIK, Hong Kong is a fairly safe place earthquake wise. The main natural danger there is the typhoons.

Well... This is quite cool for 1 person, but how about if a family would live in that kind of apartment? You're watching TV and suddenly your kid has to go to the bathroom..

I wonder what this guy could have gotten had he taken all the money he spent on his high tech setup and just bought a bigger, nicer apartment.

I believe his intent is to experiment and try out different setup and tech for his business. He's just eating his own dog food.

This isn't high tech. In the U.S. a setup like this would be well under a hundred thousand dollars. It's not inconceivable the moving walls by themselves could be under ten thousand. That's not going to buy you a lot of real estate in a dense city.

Look at this with more of a hacker spirit: experimentation is not a waste of money, but important for discovering new ideas that can further the state of the art.

Building/construction is a sector that has been stuck innovation-wise for a very long time. Or at least goes very slow compared to other areas of tech.

It might be one step along to programmable, self-reconfiguring houses of the future.

If you a interested in self-reconfiguring houses and furniture check out this Swiss research http://biorob.epfl.ch/page-36376.html

I'm also curious what the amount of money he invested was like. While I really like the hack I think it was a quite expensive one.

With a certain amount of money you can do nearly everything. The art is to do it with less.

There's something wrong about doing all that around complete poverty. How much did he spend creating it?

No family could live like that, everyone would need a different mode.

I live in 400 square feet, can't imagine a family living here, it would be rough.

Now having one of those for each family member would be friggin cool. My kids would love it.

Although it would decrease the "greenness" of the home, I can imagine that making the walls motor-powered would make room switching easier. You could integrate a master controller into the wall with options for which room you want to switch to.

did anyone else read this and think that there were going to be 24 actual rooms you could physically walk into at 1 time?

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