Let’s Keep This Quiet…

…because if the Met Council hears about this, it’ll be part of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul building codes ASAP.

A Hong Kong architect has invented what he believed to be the solution of overcrowded cities by turning concrete water pipes into tiny homes.

The OPod Tube Housing system aims to re-purpose concrete tubes measuring just over eight feet in diameter, and turn them into ‘micro-homes’ with 100 square feet of living space.

Artists conception. But you know it’s coming soon to a former warehouse block along the Blue Line, don’t you?

It is the brainchild of architect James Law of James Law Cybertecture who designed the build as a possible solution to the lack of both space and affordable housing in Hong Kong.

it’ll give urban hipsters a way to virtue-signal against those wasteful slobs in their tiny houses.

15 thoughts on “Let’s Keep This Quiet…

  1. $150/ square foot with Hong Kong wage rates? Even that’s bad, and five will get you ten the real cost is twice or three times that.

    Big question is who in Hong Kong bought bazillions of extra sections of sewer pipe.

  2. Seems to me that recycling the unused shipping containers would be more efficient. Already square and built to stack .

  3. “re-purposed”
    Does that mean “used”? If yes, storm sewer pipes or sanitary sewer pipes?

  4. These can be built and provided by the Soylent Green Company, and conveniently positioned next to one of their plants in a true, vertically-integrated business model for the future.

  5. Wait, what do you mean “invented”? I am sure homeless bums have a lock on prior art!

  6. And, looking at artist’s rendition, is it just me, or does it look like Cell Block D?

  7. Loren, you’d think that, but apparently making homes out of shipping containers isn’t as easy as you’d think. I don’t know whether it’s that mostly activists, and not professional builders, are doing the work, or if it’s simply because you can buy the supplies to frame a stick built house for less than a shipping container, and it’s a whole lot easier to work with wood than with steel.

    Whatever the reason, what I’ve seen of shipping container homes is that they go for $200/sf or more and have some seriously impaired aesthetics as a result of the limitations of the container’s structure.

  8. BTW, there is a worldwide shortage of shipping containers. It is not like there is a bunch that rot all over the place with no place to go. Because demand is high and they are worth their weight in steel, they are quite expensive.

  9. Funny about the shortage, because you used to read stories about how empty containers were piling up at ports on both the east and west coast because there was not enough back-haul traffic and nobody wanted to pay to move an empty container back to the point of origin.

  10. With regards to aesthetics, the square/corrugations of steel seem to be a better starting point than the bare curved concrete of sewer pipe. But other’s opinions may vary.

  11. Where there are extra containers depends on where you are. There are more spare containers in recipient countries like the U.S. than in exporting nations like China. That said, there’s been a huge construction boom in China as well, so we’d have to assume that would be in short supply as well.

    Engineering wise, either approach tends to give you two walls where you need one, two floors when you need one, so it’s bound to be more expensive than an ordinary modular scheme, or a building built on the site.

  12. We’d have to assume concrete pipe would be in short supply as well, I should have said.

  13. I am just relaying what I experienced firsthand trying to move cargoes from point a to point u.

    Speaking of concrete sewer/water pipes and to further Fisch’s comment: where do these come from to be “re-purposed”? What were they replaced with? Normally when you dig out old pipes, they do not come out in one neat piece. And all are made to order so there should be no surplus?

    Do you have a feeling this is just yet another solution waiting for a problem? Somebody spent money on this and I bet it was a goobernment grant because I cannot see private enterprise financing this. To me this looks like yet another example of academia wasting taxpayer money. And no, it does not hearten me to see it happens in China as well.

  14. reminds me of the dormitory in “Outland” when Sean Connery was the space marshal.

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