It  requires neither insurance nor fuel, is available, durable and portable,and provides an accessible means  for people to move their belongings and other items around. It is the shopping cart, icon not only of consumerism, but homelessness. Spurred on by the increasing number of homeless people he was seeing, movie producer Peter Samuelson (Revenge of the Nerds) partnered with the Pasadena Art Center College of Design for a design contest to develop a solution for the most common desire he heard from the homeless folks he talked to – to have a roof over their head. The result was the EDAR, and as of the article on CNN, they had created 60 units. Essentially a better shopping cart, Samuelson views the EDAR as a stop-gap solution that he hopes will one day be unnecessary. See video below:

(Embedded video from CNN Video)

Designboom also hosted a non-profit design competition called “Shelter in Cart”, which generated many, many potential variations on this theme, including “Hown” (image below).

Regardless of long-term effectiveness, I think all these designs were genuinely inspired by a desire to improve conditions for homeless people, which I find pretty encouraging.

"Hown", by Panagiotis Dramitinos, Karaolis Alkis, Alexandros Papageorgiou, Greece, winner of the "Shelter in a Cart" design competition by Designboom

Thanks to all who made it out to the opening reception for Shelter on Friday night! It was a busy night, lots of people came out, and I really enjoyed seeing some familiar faces and meeting some new folks as well. With the entry deadline for the 10 square design competition coming up before long, I thought I’d start posting some tiny house videos that might serve as inspiration.

Here’s one by Jay Schafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company who you may well have heard of – he seems to be fairly prominent in the tiny house field (although it’s not a big field), but a nice tour of his wee home nonetheless. It’s a pretty resolved space, not that inexpensive, particularly with his labour included, but relative to a house or even many cars it’s still pretty reasonable. More to come.

Here’s an inspiring story – Dan Phillips builds houses in Texas out of found, salvaged  or discarded materials. He targets single parents, artists, and families with low incomes, and involves the homeowner in the construction of their home. I’m not sure how well some of what he does would translate to our climate, but he’s got great energy, and I really like where he’s coming from. Not to mention he is amazingly inventive with how he uses those materials! If you like this, there’s lots more on his website.

As far as housing alternatives that can be both greener and more affordable, cohousing is a pretty interesting option. Although prices and unit sizes vary a lot (check out the Canadian Cohousing Network to see some examples, as well as a bunch of other interesting info) and how far towards “green” and “affordable” they go also depends on the individual development, those that I find particularly interesting have some features in common:

• decreased emphasis on car use in the site layout (eg. parking adjacent to, rather than in front of the unit)
• increased emphasis on “community”
• relatively compact units
• shared facilities  for activities that are typically infrequent (eg. workshop, gathering room)

One of the things I like about the concept of cohousing is how it would seem to challenge ideas about ownership and individual autonomy, and through doing that would seem to place a greater emphasis on community. Although people in the interviews that I’ve watched (see video for one of them below – it’s long but interesting) aren’t presenting cohousing as a utopia, on balance they are positive about the social benefits, and seemed to indicate that there is room in the model for introverts and extroverts alike.

Is cohousing a possibility in Nelson? I know there is at least one cohousing development near the city (the Middle Road Community), but although it looks lovely, my interest is more in those that are both denser and more affordable (for example, I’m not sure how indicative it is of the whole development, but the one house advertised for sale in the Middle Road Community was asking $663,000). Generally speaking, anywhere there is room for a condominium development, there’s room for cohousing, although with not much vacant land in town, those opportunities are obviously fairly limited. The other possibility would be to work with exisiting structures, and add to or modify them. Both are intriguing options, and wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear about a new development whose amenities included walking more and getting to know your neighbours? I’d be listening.