I've always found it curious; often innovations in the refugee arena would often be very welcome in other venues: camping, cheap structures, etc. These things are always priced really cheap, but we never see them really entering into the commercial market -- or when they do, they're always going for some kind of 2x the price scheme.
For example, these 188 sqft shelters would be great as a sheds, or workshops in affluent areas. Heck, I'd like to buy one for my parents to use as a storage shed on their property. Equivalent sized sheds (without solar power, or good design) run >$2000.
I see this all the time, nifty water purifiers, portable lights, radios, etc. There's some really interesting stuff being produced for refugees. Instead of crazy 2:1 schemes or whatever, why not just sell these on a 20% markup and donate the profit to buying more shelters? Or just sell them and push the price down due to the greater economies of scale?
It's funny, so many American consumers complain about having to pay for car or health insurance, saying that people should pay for what they use... but they would be livid if a store dropped prices by 10-15% but got rid of all exchange policies and warranties. And yet, that 10-15% is effectively insurance against buying a defective product, or even one you're just unhappy with.
btw, I'm extremely happy with IKEA's policies. We bought the wrong bed (with delivery - $20) and only figured it out while I was putting it together. My GF went to IKEA, paid the $10 difference, the delivery company came by the next day, took the wrong bed, brought the right one and confirmed that we had everything we needed. No double delivery charges, no discussion, and all that on a $150 product.
Don't forget about advertising which on it's own often adds 20% to niche items costs.
Also, CC processing might be ~3% but it's added on at the end. aka 3% of manufacturing, 3% sales etc. Which can add up to 10% of the initial manufacturing cost.
Might be tax incentives for any loss of money/lower charge, but I get what you were saying and with Ikea being the one producing these much of the marketing and logistics would be taken care of, right? Though customer support may cost a bit more...
If Ikea stocked them in their stores then the logistics could easily be covered with their economies of scale. Importantly if Ikea did stock them it would be a way of raising money for the project. They could sell them for $1500 and give away one to charity for every three sold (assuming 20% overheads and $300 donation).
Last year on CNN there was a documentation about repurposing old shipping containers as temporary homes in Africa. I have no direct link, but this article is related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_container_architecture Due to the economic crisis, there are a lot of old shipping container in certain parts of the world (usually due to one-way shipping purpose "import-only").
I'm sorry but you don't seriously think the Exo is comparable to this. The idea of the UNHCR program is to supply low cost, easy to install, easy to maintain housing. The product you've just described doesn't meet any of these requirements when compared to the Ikea solution.
It's a great product and perfect for many use cases e.g. events. But I wouldn't say that you could use it for the millions of desperate refugees in the world.
Electric / digital smart locks that you unlock via a watch or is it bluetooth or NFC?
That does not seem like a rational inclusion in a project intended to be deployed in crisis situations.
Um well our refugees cant get in right now because our generators stopped working or the batteries ran out.
KISS is an extremely important attribute of gear that needs to be deployed fast in under emergency circumstances. By definition it is not known what the conditions will be nor the nature of the catastrophe.
Heh, it was actually designed by our CEO, a designer from Mississippi — he's been working on the concept since Katrina, finally got it funded a year ago.
Surprised there are no architects on the team - it looks pretty badly designed in terms of energy usage - an impermeable membrane designed to trap heat in. Even a solar attic fan-style ventilation system on the top that pulls hot air out and draws fresh air in from vents on the ground could do great wonders without having to install A/C, etc.
They nest inside each other as the picture shows. This is clearly a low-labour product. Though I think if you have a lot of people needing a house, there's already a pool of excess labor available.
How long are the beds? I'm 6' tall and find that many things are too short. From the pictures, they don't look to be tremendously long (but it is hard to tell).
Also, what's the longest period of time that 4 of you have lived out of one of the prototypes? They look pretty tiny for 4 people. Especially when someone decides they need to get out of one of the upper beds in the middle of the night.
To double the lack of point, the average male height in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway is 6', so presumably the beds in a "European hostel" in those countries will be able to accommodate them.
Likely but the real problem with doing so is actually land. Even if you own some many cities take issue with non-permanent domiciles that are lived in for long periods (not least of all because you escape housing tax, and aren't up to "code").
However several people have done what you're suggesting by:
- Living on a boat (either out at sea, moored just off-shore, or at a marina). This can range from being cheaper, to being much more expensive.
- Campervan, or enclosed truck. They often park semi-legally overnight and move every few days to escape harassment. Bathrooms are problematic (gym? work?).
- Camping (i.e. just tent and woods). This often escapes harassment (since you aren't in a city) but you are limited by water, and often travelling to/from the site is time consuming if you wish to work.
- Living at work (if possible). Likely legal but can get you fired thus homeless.
- Living a hotel. Some people have claimed that they can live in a hotel for less than the cost of a mortgage + utilities + taxes + other expenses. Ditto with some cruises. YMMV.
- Living in a foreign country. If you work remotely living abroad or in the middle of nowhere can cost a LOT less than living in a big expensive city.
PS - In general being homeless is "illegal" in most US cities. You'd get harassed, maybe even arrested, just for being without a fixed address. Most cities will try to run you out of town (literally and figuratively).
> Campervan, or enclosed truck. They often park semi-legally overnight and move every few days to escape harassment. Bathrooms are problematic (gym? work?).
My neighborhood has had an increasing influx of these in the past few months. At first I figured, "Live and let live. If this is all they can afford until they get back on their feet, more power to them."
Since then, I've learned that the solution to the bathroom problem is often "shit in the alley behind my house", and their daytime activities typically consist of dealing and doing drugs and scattering trash. I ran out of sympathy right around the time I found a used needle near the front yard where my toddler likes to run around and play.
Sounds like your problem is drug users/dealers, not people with mobile homes. I hope you wouldn't also want to push out the good ones who aren't causing problems. You can just consider that you now live in a bad neighborhood. Some people have this from their permanent house neighbors too.
Cheapest way to live in Berkeley, CA is on a boat.
$7.74 per foot at the marina, and you get access to bathroom and showers. If you're willing to do some DIY, you can get a boat for a few grand. Plus, you get to sail around the bay!
Obviously not everyone is cut out for that, but it's worked for a Ph.D. I know.
I looked into this, the problem was, there were no marina slots available for a 30 foot boat. Not that I could find, and the waiting lists at that point in time were on the order of years, not months.
> - Living in a foreign country. If you work remotely living abroad or in the middle of nowhere can cost a LOT less than living in a big expensive city.
You don't have to go abroad to solve that (unless you're from Singapore or something). Most (larger) countries have deprived areas where the local administration is perfectly happy to welcome anyone who works (in an "export" industry, selling something out of the area and this bringing in cash) and pays taxes.
And even combination of decent living and good telecom infrastructure is often possible.
I'm guessing, like most people who have more resources than refugees, you and your wife would prefer living somewhere with a bathroom, indoor plumbing, and a refrigerator.
I'm joking and serious at the same time: Living in a very constraint space is certainly not for everybody and - as far as I understand - highly taxing. I'm sure I could live in a sparsely decorated minimum sq hut - alone.
I have the world's best wife, but stuff us into a place like that and over time only one will come out alive..
This depends very much where you live. In some places with very expensive property markets the structure can be as low as 20% of the cost of a home (a typical downpayment amount) -- conversely, with low property/land values, the quality of the building itself can be most of the value.
A side effect of high land values is that the relative cost of teardowns/rebuilds is much lower, so you tend to see more replacement of the buildings themselves unless there are other regulations in place blocking that.
I haven't found their weight, but their lifespan in only estimated to be three years, does anyone know if they are easily recyclable, do they burn, if so are any gases toxic?
Can they be combined to form interlinked structures?
I'm guessing that the end-of-life path for 95% of these are shantytowns.. where they will continue to be among the safest structures. so in that regard, they are completely recyclable.
They are polymer but it doesn't say which polymer, if they are PLA then they are biodegradable and safe to burn but I think that making them from PLA might not make them so robust? They are probably made from some petrolium-based plastic, so they probably aren't very burnable and thinking on it you don't want them flammable.
Looking at the structure it looks like it wouldn't take much to link them together and I think the materials look easy to reuse.
Sure, but then you have to find some place to put it. The house I'm living in is worth $25k, but the land it's on is worth $1.6m last I checked. It's not always about a place to put your things, it's about where to put the place to put your things.
Depends. There's a lot of cheap land in the western US once you get away from the city where $5k-$10k will get you a place you can plop a few of these things down when you wanna get away from things. You'll have to bring your utilities with you, but water tanks, solar panels, etc aren't horribly expensive these days.
There are towns in rural Saskatchewan Canada that will sell you a serviced lot for $1 if you agree to build a house on the lot and live in it for three years.
As a curiosity, are you from around here? I'm in Saskatoon right now, but we've got some land down in the Last Mountain Lake area that we might develop with a small "away from the city" home. (In fact, my girlfriend purchased it... 3 lots and an old unplumbed church for $1).
We're actually pursuing a similar model at Reaction (http://www.reactionhousing.com), convincing commercial customers who buy units to also buy units to donate.
We'll see how it works in the long run, but initial results have been encouraging.
They wouldn't make it to Australia. The government would force them to Nauru or Cambodia where they would be locked up in basically a prison until the tried to commit suicide or were beaten/raped by staff. Or until they gave up and decided to go back to where they came from.
Australia truly is a lovely, compassionate country.
Most Australians and Italians would object to this. Unfortunately most White Christians are irreparably racist. I would suggest a tolerant liberal nation like Israel as the destination.
It would be really great if they sold these such that one purchase could cover the cost of one for charity. It would be even better if there was enough demand to drive the production cost down further.
> It would be really great if they sold these such that one purchase could cover the cost of one for charity.
No, absolutely not. This is the same mistake the one laptop per child people made.
Just sell the shit out of them to everyone who can use one. Economies of scale will bring the price down. The "buy two, get one!" approach deters people from buying them and shoots economies of scale in the head.
Depending on how much they cost as well as how much IKEA wants to profit from their sale, it could be well within their reach to charge (for example) Americans what one would expect for an IKEA garden shed, writer's shed, whatever you want to call it. If you search prefab outdoor sheds on Sears, you'll see that prices vary from around $300 to $2000 depending on size and materials and taking sale prices into account. One advantage IKEA has is that they thrive on people buying in to their systems, even when it's not necessarily cheaper than the alternative. That can be attributed to better design, integration/continuity (i.e. "everything just goes well together"), or just shopper's fatigue after a day of wandering through an IKEA store. How much would you be willing to pay for it? That's the only question IKEA needs an answer. If the can sell it for cost x 2 without an average IKEA shopper batting an eye then they're golden. Whether they want to try squeezing a profit in there is up to them but by no means necessary. They get publicity and a new product line.
To address what you've said about OLPC, I don't think it's a good comparison at all. Problems with the OLPC in this case: huge restructuring due to the economy, never intended for consumers, and in an already massive product field (PCs > Laptops > Netbooks). Still, the Give 1 Get 1 campaign netted 83,500 sales. That's pretty good, considering the cost was $400 in the same year that the MacBook Air became available for $1800 (which people thought was pretty high then). How many of those people expected to actually use their OLPC? How many people do you think would buy an IKEA shed just for it to sit around and make them feel charitable or something?
> No, absolutely not. This is the same mistake the one laptop per child people made.
No absolutely not. The mistake the OLPC people made was trying to make people believe that throwing underpowered overdesigned overpriced laptops at kids would solve any problem other than providing employment to Nicky Negroponte and his gang.
Yup - I was thinking just that. I could use one of these in the yard as a writing/craft space and would be happy to pay enough for one to be donated to UNHCR.
As I understand it, Buckminster Fuller designed a geodesic dome to be made from wax coated cardboard. The pieces were printed with instructions for assembly with some kind of large stapler. His intention was for these to be used in similar situations such as refugees, disaster relief, etc. He claimed that the structures would survive rainy seasons and winters, but that they were still supposed to be temporary.
The problem of housing in Stockholm isn't about how expensive it is to build; it is about zoning (and rent control on top of that).
Generally, third-world solutions (tents, shantytowns, container homes, or this) are a solution for how to build cheaply. First-world problems are mostly about zoning and permissions to build.
Or they can put the manufacturing in Romania so the beggars never have to leave home and amass debts they'll never be able to pay off as career beggars.
These remind me of an architecture project to produce semi livable spaces for Tokyo homeless. The blue tarpaulin structures. I think there was a German movie cherry something or other in which a terminally ill man who travels to Japan to gets to know a girl who lives in one such structure in one of the parks there. This is bigger and perhaps more durable. But too big for a homeless person to move to a new spot, if necessary, in a hurry.
If they could marry the modularity of this with the size and portability of the blue tarp structures, this could be an option to homeless communities who prefer not to go to official shelters.
In other words, I wonder if they could take this but build a version for individual homeless people.
These look pretty functional. A bit sturdier than the typical Army tent and no external guy wires. Given that they have been testing these, how do they hold up in the field to wind? I was recently asked how I would provide shelter for people working on a pipeline in the middle of no where, and this looks like it would fit the bill.
This is really impressive. The problem is highly constrained. Because a house is a sturdy structure, large amounts of physical material are involved. Furthermore, there are quality/safety requirements.
It's great to see Ikea applying their deep expertise in producing sturdy structures that can be shipped cheaply, to this area.
I'd buy one of these this summer no question - my wife's family lives on a small, mostly uninhabited island, and has some space set aside for a cabin for us. But building much of anything there is crazy expensive, so this would be awesome.
I think these are engineering-wise fantastic. Though, I do worry that they look a little too non-local. When you take care of someone, sure you start at the base of Maslow's law of hierarchy, but it is important to take cultural, personal, etc. issues into consideration as well. This hold especially true when dealing with prolonged displacement where identity and self-worth can be challenged.
I disagree. The condescension that western people show to the rest of the world is very grating, as a non-westerner.
People don't care about "culture" when it comes to basic needs and survival. A roof, any roof, over my head is worth infinitely more than no roof when it's raining outside or -10 degrees.
It can very easily turn into mockery when you don't understand a culture and then try to emulate it. Think parents trying to act hip, it just doesn't work. Why try to falsely disguise what it is and where it's from?
This cannot be said often enough: "non-profit" is a phrase relating to the tax situation of a corporation. It is not synonymous with "good", "charitable", or even "not greedy." On the flip side, "for-profit" is not necessarily synonymous with "evil" or "non-charitable".
I've noticed lately that a good portion of society views legal tax sheltering and legal reduction of tax burden as immoral.
The thought seems to be if you are making lots of money you are obligated to freely hand over a good chunk of it to the government.
IKEA is very creative in their tax avoidance. Interestingly enough, it may actually be a net gain for the countries where IKEA employs people. Because of their ultra-low tax burden and the fact that the profits mostly have to go back into the business, they are able to pay more employees AND pay their employees more. Those employees in turn pay taxes to support the government.
A simple test to use is to ask what would happen if all organizations did the same thing. It would have to be structured differently.
Nonprofits are barred from distributing profits, and IKEA uses a loop hole - trademark costs - to circumvent this.
As for paying more people better, the evidence doesn't support this. IKEA tends to match standard retail wages: store managers make approximately $125K, and salespeople $28K.[1] Near Vancouver, Canada, IKEA recently weathered a 17 month strike from its union. [2]
These things are great. But at the same time - so weird.
Helpless victims of failed states, social injustice, greed, hatred, etc can now rely on high tech structures to take care of them.
Genocide ? No problem, we've got you covered. We've got just the perfect structures for $1000 a pop for you to take shelter in.
I mean, it IS the right thing to do, but at the same time, I don't know..
I guess would prefer that somehow there were no refugees and suffering in the first place...
It's a strange thing to say, but somehow, by providing these solutions we're making the crimes less grave, more acceptable, a technical matter rather than a moral one...?
I feel like that is taking that line of logic too far. These aren't being created so that people can look over the suffering and alleviate the seriousness of the crime, they're to reduce the suffering that couldn't be prevented in the first place. These shelters aren't going to be pointed at as reasons why actions resulting in refugees aren't that bad, because that obviously wasn't a large enough factor to stop it from happening in the first place
You want ladders and this is another platform to keep people out of the water. They are both needed, the problem is people build platforms and forget to provide a way up or believe that is where the person will stay. This is probably why I get so irritated at the "minimum wage must be a living wage" crowd. Its not the goal or desirable for that to be good enough. I would rather be honest about it and implement some type of assistance with the goal of a career. I keep seeing people who are "getting by" but have no way to advance. It kills the soul.
People are going to suffer, its not a perfect world. It hurts to see, especially when you drive past it each day. Planning for the suffering and providing temporary solution are good things.
But, housing is broken and people are feeling around. Tiny homes, these things, micro apartments are attempts at short and long term changes. We need more options. This isn't it, but its another idea.
Something like this will keep people safe for a while, but it is should not be thought of as an end. You're a good person and care, and skepticism is a good thing, but don't lose faith that small, positive steps are a good thing. I do think this is a small, positive step that doesn't diminish the gravity of the crimes people or bad luck can perpetrate on others. The best solution will be technical and have a moral outcome.
It's a bandage. Bandages suck. They're obvious, they're uncomfortable, etc. But they're needed. Housing like this gives refugees a bit of solace while the bigger problems are dealt with. It means that the earthquake victim doesn't have a leaky roof or a mudpit for a floor come monsoon season. It means the genocide victim has a real door, and all the psychological benefits that that provides. It means that these people have a bit of a chance to heal. It's not much,, but it's a start.
It would be nice if we could just put these resources towards solving genocide, natural disasters, and war, but in the meantime these people need a place to live right now that helps them from catching and spreading disease and gives them a sense of dignity.
by providing these solutions we're making the crimes less grave, more acceptable
How often do first-worlders seriously consider these problems? How often do you seriously consider these problems? How do you get more invisible than invisible?
a technical matter rather than a moral one
It's a false dichotomy to suggest that it should be one or the other (or even a mixture of only these two). Human interaction is incredibly complex, and it doesn't boil down to being operable on only one philosophical space
This is akin to saying we shouldn't need mosquito nets for the poor because mosquitoes should not exist. Yes, they should not exist, but that is tangential to the issue of the nets.
>>I guess would prefer that somehow there were no refugees and suffering in the first place...
Gandhi was once asked to preside over as a chief guest on the opening day of an old age home. In his reply in the letter he argued why in an ideal world orphanages, old age homes etc shouldn't even need to exist.
But that is how the society is. Until you eliminate the evil, you need to prepare for its consequences.
I'm bothered by the out-sized number of negative attacks on this comment. Not because they are negative, but because they are personal. I wholeheartedly believe in constructive criticism, but discounting someones viewpoint based on another subjective viewpoint is not constructive criticism.
Considering that Ikea doesn't certify the sources of their wood, it's very conceivable that some of this suffering and injustice is directly related to Ikea's raw materials supply chain.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-09/thousand-do...