Why not ask "What If"

What if manufactured housing had taken a different path?  It is an important question.  It can be hard to get people past their negative thoughts about some issues with manufactured housing – with Katrina Trailers, with “trailer parks,” with homes that are underwater.

Yet a lot of innovative architectural energy has sought to apply the power of industrial production with the human shelter.

Today I would like to consider one of those efforts – the Archimede System.  The Archimede System uses rhombododecahedrons. A home is often built from between 30 and 60 panels.

The homes were built with the intent of providing affordable housing.  For this reason, they were built with the idea of putting a car in the physical space below the structure itself.  The design saves land, reduces the likelihood of robbery, and allows wind drafts to pass under the home (saving on heating costs).

An Archimede System home. Parking is below.

Perhaps this is not a suprising event, in the era of beach housing on stilts near shorelines, but at the time (70s), building homes up in the air was not standard practice.  That is why the builders were surprised to discover that the homes had a special talent.  They survived very rough weather – hurricanes, tsunamis, and high winds.

The homes are made of concrete.  This gives the homes a bit of a Metabolist reference.  More practically, it adds purpose to homes that are used in high moisture, high parasite environments.

Here is a aerial view of a series of interconnected Archimede homes in St. Maarten’s, the Guana Bay Archimede Village.

Now the homes are being used for shelter in the Artic.