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Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

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Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#1

Post by londondev45 »

Let's be fair... If automation dies what we all probably think it will. Everything is going to be abundant and free. Music perhaps is the best example. It used to be £25 to buy an LP in the UK. Include inflation and it's a lot more.

Forward to today, housing is in crisis everywhere. From London to Sydney, every single western city is unaffordable for all.

My ask is this, can we yes WE digital folk, do what has been done for music to housing. So that we can stop working our lives into the ground to afford it.

Ideas wanted, I'd quit my job to work on this.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#3

Post by MilnerRoute »

Interesting idea! (Although our bodies will never be digitized -- and they'll need some protection from cold and a way to sleep...)

The closest thing I've heard to a tech solution for housing is the 3D printed house that went on the market. That raises the question of whether there's some way to radically reduce the cost of creating housing. (Maybe interchangeable parts, like what revolutionized mass production?)

The only role I can even imagine for digitalization would be digital pictures of available properties -- maybe automating some kind of drone fly-by at addresses where properties are for sale, and then creating a better web site for browsing them?

Of course, there might be other fixes for housing too. (Encouraging employers to let people work from home, or at least creating jobs in a wider variety of places.) Someone once tried to convince me the solution was just to encourage people to have fewer children, because over the time the resulting population decrease would do a lot to improve the availability (and thus the affordability) of housing.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#4

Post by reilly3000 »

It takes a lot to comply with established building codes and practices. While they all exist for good reasons, it means the existing housing supply is inflexible and reconfiguring it to meet new demands is very expensive.

I believe the solution lies in reconfigurable, self-assembling building components. If a home can adapt to its environment and the needs of its residents, the cost of planning drops dramatically. Imagine upcycled plastics or recaptured carbon bricks that could be extremely strong, yet migratory on-demand. Such a material could help us adapt to changing populations and climate conditions while slashing cost and waste. While I think 3D printed concrete is neat, it’s meant to be fixed. I want smart legos, or the microbots of Big Hero 6 as my walls.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#5

Post by claudiulodro »

Housing isn't infinitely replicate-able like music is. That's why music is basically free now, and that's the fundamental obstacle I think.

My off-the-wall hair-brained solution would be to infill a ton of the ocean. Since the Earth is 75% ocean, we could double the available landmass and still have 50% of the ocean! That would be plenty of land for everyone!

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#6

Post by traverseda »

Ehh, building codes and land ownership mean that I don't expect much progress.

Two things that jump to mind. Build houses out of old tires. There's a lot of them and mostly they get burnt. Not enough for everyone to have an old tires house in their lifetime, but enough that maybe 10-20% of houses could be old tires?

Shipping container homes that can be transported easily that hook into some kind of "dock" providing septic, power, etc. Most would probably consist of a few segments, but even one 40ft high cube is bigger than many people's apartments. Of course basically what I'm describing is an RV, so why aren't those more common?

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#8

Post by xhkkffbf »

claudiulodro wrote: post #5

Housing isn't infinitely replicate-able like music is. That's why music is basically free now, and that's the fundamental obstacle I think. My off-the-wall hair-brained solution would be to infill a ton of the ocean. Since the Earth is 75% ocean, we could double the available landmass and still have 50% of the ocean! That would be plenty of land for everyone!

Not to be petty, but water is about 8lbs per gallon. A ton is only 250 gallons. So filling in a ton of the ocean isn't going to be very much.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#9

Post by esyir »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #3

Interesting idea! (Although our bodies will never be digitized -- and they'll need some protection from cold and a way to sleep...) The closest thing I've heard to a tech solution for housing is the 3D printed house that went on the market. That raises the question of whether there's some way to radically reduce the cost of creating housing. (Maybe interchangeable parts, like what revolutionized mass production?) The…

As others have said though, the issue with housing isn't the building, it's the red tape. Want to build high, nope, can't get the permit. Dense? No. Mixed use? Def not.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#10

Post by ilaksh »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #3

Interesting idea! (Although our bodies will never be digitized -- and they'll need some protection from cold and a way to sleep...) The closest thing I've heard to a tech solution for housing is the 3D printed house that went on the market. That raises the question of whether there's some way to radically reduce the cost of creating housing. (Maybe interchangeable parts, like what revolutionized mass production?) The…

I think that 3d printing houses is going to be huge but it has a long way to go. They can print the main structure, but not do things like windows, plumbing, electric, trusses, roofs, etc. So a massive part of the construction is still manual.

When the entire building or almost the entire thing is truly automatic, that is going to be a game changer. Not saying it doesn't help now to be able to 3d print a lot of it. But it is in no way a fully automated construction at this point. So the economics are going to get dramatically better as the harder parts get automated.

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