Vijay Govindarajan's Urban Renewal: Building a House for $300

The average price of a New York City hotel room is $320/night--and that bloated number is considered a reasonable rate. But now, thanks to Vijay Govindarajan, international business professor at Dartmouth, people will be able to buy an entire house for less than a single night in the Big Apple. Together, with a team of students and lecturers at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, Govindarajan is developing the $300 House, a survival shelter intended for use in developing countries and places struck by natural disasters. 

Govindarajan explains the problem.

"Over 70 million people – the size of the United Kingdom – live in pavements with only sky as their roof. Is this right? Even insects and spiders have houses. Housing is a human right. Any nation which cannot house and look after its own people is a failed nation. It doesn't have to be that way. Businesses, governments, and NGOs must work together to solve this wicked problem." 

Govindarajan's house "would turn strangers into neighbors, slums into neighborhoods. Despite the ultra-low price point, it could include basic modern services such as running water and electricity. More important, it would create a community that shared access to computers, cell phones, televisions, water filters, solar panels, and clean-burning stoves. In doing so, it would enable the poor to leapfrog the limits of slums. It would make healthy and safe living possible and a good education achievable."

Healthy and safe are the operative words here, as the "house" is essentially a one-room structure with hammocks, folding chairs and drop-down partitions for privacy. Each unit would include the aforementioned water filter and rooftop solar panel to power solar batteries. 

Govindarajan and his team recently held a competition in which 300 design teams submitted their proposals. Now that the winners have been announced, the process of prototyping will begin, with plans for three projects in Ethiopia, Haiti and India. There are plenty of ways for non-profits, universities and individuals to get involved now.

-- Perrin Drumm

MoMA Exhibition: 'Foreclosed' Features 5 Visions For The Future Of America's Cities & Suburbs

A model of WORKac's Nature-City proposal for Keizer, Oregon. Photo: James Ewing.

After you attend Mitchell Joachim's Envisioning Ecological Cities lecture on Thursday, why not continue your explorations into the future of urban design with MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream--which is on display at the museum through August 13.

Last summer five teams lead by the architecture firms MOS, Visible Weather, Studio Gang, WORKac and Zago Architecture convened at MoMA PS1, where they participated in workshops "to envision new housing and transportation infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation, particularly in the country's suburbs."

Building on ideas from Columbia University's The Buell Hypothesis, the teams took on five different foreclosure-ravaged locations across the country and began developing proposals for "new housing and transportation infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation." The exhibition features those proposals in the form of models, renderings animations and more.

MoMA's Inside/Out blog offers a behind-the-scenes look at the workshops as they unfolded, and you'll also find more information (including lots of great models and renderings) on the exhibition's interactive website. This should hold us urban design junkies over until Joachim's Terreform ONE kicks off its month-long ONE Lab Summer 2012: Future Cities program in July!

Take a look at a few more images from Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream: 

Rendering of a shared courtyard from Studio Gang's The Garden in the Machine proposal for Cicero, Illinois.

A rendering from MOS's Thoughts on a Walking City proposal for the Oranges, New Jersey.

A diagram from Zago Architecture's Property with Properties proposal for Rialto, California.

A rendering of the view from communal offices toward a public plaza and City Hall from Visible Weather's Simultaneous City proposal for Temple Terrace, Florida. 

-- John Ruscher

Essential Event: Dr. Mitchell Joachim Envisions The Cities Of The Future This Thursday At 3rd Ward

 

Are we ready for the future? Something of a loaded question, but Dr. Mitchell Joachim will tackle it this Thursday in Envisioning Ecological Cities: The Sci-Fi Based Solution to Climate Change, a free lecture taking place right here at 3rd Ward from 7:30-9:30pm.

Mitchell is the co-founder of Terreform ONE, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to fostering ecological design and sustainability in cities around the world. From July 9 to August 3 the Brooklyn-based organization will be presenting ONE Lab Summer 2012: Future Cities, a four-week program that "will address the emerging discipline of global urbaneering by assembling a wide range of innovators from fields as diverse as architecture, material scence, urban design, biology, civil engineering and media art." ONE Lab will include a design studio, workshops and a Future Cities Seminar, which will feature speakers including vertical farming pioneer Dr. Dickson D. Despommier, architect and artist Vito Acconci and artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko.

Interested? Come check out Joachim's lecture on Thursday for a sneak peak of the issues and ideas that ONE Lab will address this summer. He'll talk about how urban design can work towards better and more effective solutions by anticipating and planning for the impact of innovative technologies.

Get ready by watching his appearance on The Colbert Report from back in 2009:

-- John Ruscher

Westward Ho! Brooklyn's Mark Reigelman Stakes a Tiny Claim in California

Mark Reigelman is an artist who likes to call attention to space, though not "outer space," more like our immediate space. Known both for cloaking a room in a dizzying display of black and white stripes to call our attention to architectural lines, as well as transforming stately buildings with huge, white weather balloons. Now Reigelman has declared his own manifest destiny, a pledge to "intrepidly claim and occupy space, regardless of hazard, existing occupants, inconvenience, daunting odds or common sense. Manifest Destiny! is single-minded in its objective: move West, claim territory, build a home." 

The Brooklyn-based artist went as far West as San Francisco, where he teamed up with local architect Jenny Chapman and engineer Paul Endres to build and install a small house on the side of The Hotel des Arts. A solar panel mounted to the roof powers lights inside (see image below) so you know when someone is home and strangers won't--ya know--rob the place. 

Using a 19th-century architectural style and vintage building materials, the structure is both homage to the romantic spirit of the Western Myth and a commentary on the arrogance of Westward expansion.

Interested in making a man-sized birdhouse of your own? Check out our woodworking and welding classes.

Manifest Destiny! will be up until October 2012.

-- Perrin Drumm

Epic Ideas // Illustrator James Gulliver Hancock Hopes To Draw Every Building In New York

All the Buildings in New York - Mott St, by James Gulliver Hancock.

Brooklyn-based Australian illustrator James Gulliver Hancock loves drawing. He also loves buildings. It makes sense then, that he's taken on an epic project bringing those two passions together. The project's name, All the Buildings in New York, says it all. His goal is to draw all of the Big Apple's buildings. While that ambition might be as far-fetched as Sufjan Steven's Fifty States Project, Hancock has done quite a few, and you can browse them by location via this nifty Google map. Hit the jump below to watch a video interview about the project.

Here's Hancock's explanation of how All the Buildings in New York got started, from an interview with CasaSugar:

I'd been doing this series of drawings where I capture a cliché of each city I'd visit; you can see the other ones on my website. So when I moved to New York, it was natural to do one here. However, moving to this great city, I was a little overwhelmed, so this became a special one.

It was interesting, because when I moved here it was like moving to a familiar place. Being originally from Australia, I'd seen so many pop culture images of New York that I almost didn't believe it was real. When I arrived, it had this kind of movie set-like mystique, so the blog was a conscious decision to try and tackle that, to make connections to my new home through drawing. And it's worked, through sitting down and taking in different places through the city, I've made new connections, planted markers of familiarity for myself within its structure and its reality, almost to the point that the buildings become little friends everywhere.

That sense of fascination and connection with his surroundings is what we love about Hancock's work. His project doesn't come across as a gimmick or contrivance, but a genuine glimpse of what it's like to discover the city. That's probably a familiar feeling for anyone who's moved to the New York, as is another moment that Hancock describes in that CasaSugar interview:

Sometimes in Summer, crossing one of the bridges, I've found myself with an uninterrupted view of the city, and I get heart palpitations, worrying that I may not be able to draw it all. I am a really focused person and it almost stresses me out the volume of buildings! But I hope to be here for a while, so we'll see!

Want to make sure Hancock gets to your building before he's old and gray? No problem: Commission the NYC building of your choice via his website.

And now for that video interview with Hancock, by Marisa Guzman-Aloia:

-- John Ruscher

WATCH THIS NOW // How To Fit Four Full-Sized Rooms Into A Small Studio Apartment

New York wouldn't be New York without its bountiful supply of exceptionally small apartments, but we prefer to think of these pocked-sized pads as creative opportunities rather than style crampers.

Your own place probably isn't as "cozy" as this one or this one, but if you're feeling like there might not be enough room for all of those great gifts that you've received this holiday season, this video might give you some ideas for better utilizing your little slice of the Big Apple.

In the clip faircompanies, a cool website devoted to sustainable and simple living, takes a tour of the Manhattan studio of third grade teacher Eric Schneider, who enlisted architects Michael Chen and Kari Anderson of Normal Projects to turn his place into something more than just a 450-square-foot box with a tiny kitchen in the corner. They did just that, packing the features of four full-sized rooms into the space with an ingenious design that overlaps, slides and folds. Behold, the Origami Apartment!

-- John Ruscher

MIXED MEDIA OPPORTUNITY // NYCEDC Seeks Creative Proposals For Downtown Light Installation

A light installation under the Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO - photo by Jules Antonio

Think you have an idea that could illuminate Lower Manhattan? The New York City Economic Development Corporation wants to hear it!

The organization, which promotes economic growth throughout the city, is calling for proposals "for the development and implementation of an innovative and engaging lighting and placemaking initiative aimed at increasing Lower Manhattan’s exposure, expanding its appeal in the evening hours, and spurring more diverse business activity by using the area's buildings and public spaces to create a strong neighborhood identifier visible to viewers from both near and far."

NYCEDC is looking for a proposal that embraces and enhances Lower Manhattan's identity as a vibrant, 24/7 community:

This project should occur on a regular basis (i.e., weekly, monthly) and be able to be implemented by the end of 2012, and ideally have a guaranteed life span of at least three years. The lighting project may include, and is not limited to, projection-mapping including 3D effects, interactive elements and opportunities for interaction, up/downlighting and pedestrian or kinetic motion-activated lighting.

The project is scheduled to kick off by the end of 2012 and will continue for at least three years. The selected team will receive up to $1 million from NYCEDC, along with other potential funding sources, to realize their proposal.

The deadline for submitting a proposal is February 13, 2012, and you can find out more information from the official press release as well as the project's procurement page.

-- John Ruscher

ESSENTIAL EVENT // TEDxBrooklyn Comes To Brooklyn Bowl And Livestream This Friday

This Friday, December 2, the second edition of TEDxBrooklyn comes to Brooklyn Bowl, and, while the in-person event itself is sold out, you can still soak up all of the knowledge, creativity and inspiration from afar.

There will be free live screenings of the entire conference at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, 61 Local in Cobble Hill and the Brooklyn Brainery in Carroll Gardens. If you can't make it to any of those places, you'll be able to catch all of the action from anywhere else via a live video stream.

Right now you can peruse the TEDxBrooklyn Program Guide [PDF], which features background information on all of the speakers and presenters, such as host and renowned funnyman Eugene Mirman, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, architect and designer Susannah Drake and Creators Project coordinators Julia Kaganskiy and Ciel Hunter.

Take a look at the full schedule after the jump and head to one of the venues mentioned above or to the live stream at TEDxBrooklyn.com on Friday, when things will kick off at 9am.

-- John Ruscher

ESSENTIAL EVENT // TEDxBrooklyn Speakers Announced, Tickets On Sale Thursday

This one's still a few weeks away, but tickets go on sale this Thursday and as avid fans of all things TED, we want to make sure you don't miss out.

On Friday, December 2nd, Brooklyn Bowl will host the second TEDxBrooklyn conference. The "x" means that it's an independently organized event granted a license by TED (short for Technology, Entertainment & Design), the world-renowned series of conferences centered around the slogan "ideas worth spreading."

The first TEDxBrooklyn took place last November at the Pratt Institute and featured speakers such as novelist and WNYC host Kurt Andersen, Fabien Cousteau (grandson of Jacques), NYC artist Swoon, and even Richard Saul Wurman, the architect and designer who founded TED back in 1984.

Organizers just announced this year's initial lineup, and we're excited to see that it's got something for everyone, from rooftop farming and aerial acrobats to some of NYC's coolest tech companies and cultural game-changers.

Check out the lineup after the jump, along with a couple video highlights from last year's conference. And remember: tickets go on sale this Thursday, November 10 at 1pm.

TEDxBrooklyn's initial 2011 lineup:

Susannah Drake :: Principal at dlandstudio pllc :: The future of landscape architecture

Blake Whitman :: VP, Creative Development at Vimeo :: Online video community builder extraordinaire

Viraj Puri :: Founder of Gotham Greens :: A rooftop farm in the heart of Brooklyn

Sean Meenan :: Founder of Habana Outpost :: Sustainable hacienda

Lisa Jamhoury and Dana Abrassart :: Independent Aerial Acrobats :: Creatively adorning Brooklyn's airspace, with original musical accompaniment by Philip Joseph Restine III

Jack Walsh :: Executive Producer at Celebrate Brooklyn! :: Legendary performance festival at the Prospect Park Bandshell, produced by BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn

Chad Dickerson :: CEO of Etsy :: The net’s most prosperous online flea market

Jonny Wilson :: Founder of Eclectic Method :: Audiovisual remix producer/DJ

Jullien Gordon :: Purpose Finder :: Innerview.me + 30 Day Do It

Jen Lyon :: Founder of Mean Red Productions :: Brooklyn’s risk-taking event production

Farai Chideya :: Author/Public Radio Host :: Award winning writer & media personality

Laurie Cumbo :: Founder and Executive Director of MoCADA :: Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art

Ruth Ozeki :: Author/Filmmaker :: Ordained Zen minister to kick off the event

Paul Steely White :: Executive Director at Transportation Alternatives :: Reclaiming NYC streets

Eugene Mirman :: Comedian :: Smartest funny man in Brooklyn

-- John Ruscher