Further Research
- Ahmad Ahseek
- Sep 5, 2020
- 5 min read
I found this intriguing story of a Los Angeles musician who was building tiny houses for homeless people. Looking at his idea, it’s made out of what seem to be good material, have a quite nice appearance and works with solar energy, so that the homeless don’t have to pay for electricity and also so that it is totally portable with only the appropriate truck to move it.
From my point of view it is totally worth it and even from the point of view of the homeless men they were happy and felt safe from the highly secured one door available and the were also given a storage area for their belongings. The homeless man also points out how in his tent on the street anybody could cut a hole and has access to his stuffs. So, the design served a great purpose indeed.
However March 3, 2016 the authorities seized the tiny houses for destruction, claiming that they were a hazard for the homeless people themselves and the passerby as well, that the design wasn’t stable and that there’s no proper insulation to keep the energy flow safe within the house.
I’m not so sure yet about the materials used to design the house but I would perhaps agree that it might be an issue to the passerby, but thinking about it the tent on the street might cause a hazard too since they occupy a certain space on the pavement but no one did nothing and the homeless and those who had a home were living in harmony despite this.
However, if the material was indeed hazardous then I would agree that maybe a development would be required rather than a total destruction of the structure. Elvis Summers the musician who build the houses claimed in an interview that the authorities has been finding ways to solve the issue of the homeless for over 30 years in LA but we saw no progress yet, so his idea was so far the most appropriate solution.
Actually this whole story made me realize a few things, such as the fact that some design might need a better research on the policies and management of a country rather than going straight into it. Furthermore, it also made me question about the safety of the material, especially when there’s electricity involved, like how do we know that our design will integrate a culture safely and without any hazards.
After seeing the design of Elvis Summers and trying to relate it to the recent things I’ve learnt at school and my project work I started thinking more about how design and the modern technology could be harmful. I’ve explored a few design concept, started my research on YouTube as always for some inspiration and I came across some design that apparently was made by the government to prevent people from doing outlawed activities or in some cases to create a barrier to prevent homeless people to sleep on the street but due to a lack of prove from the video I started thinking about our possible design similar to this one which could in some way bound us.
Of course being more familiar with my home country my first ideas came from there, like for example the new busses the UBS and NTC started providing in Mauritius which to me was not comfortable at all compared to the tradition old buss designs because of a few points such as how the 4 of the back seats pushes your legs up because they were just where the wheels were situated and they didn’t elevate the seat to give more room to our legs and similarly the hangers that you were supposed to grip on to resist the pushing effects of the bus as it’s driving. The old metal bar were better at this job compared to these hangers. Unfortunately those are simply my personal complains about these buses and since my country is so infamous I don’t have any picture to show it.
But then I dig even deeper and remembered the highway they built among mountains which is causing several landslides due to the fact that they haven’t taken the environmental details into consideration and everytime the road is still under development and closed to the public.
The article is in French but basically it explains how the government of Mauritius spent over 5 million Mauritian Roupees and how the road won’t be ready anytime soon. It’s an old article dating 2018 but this the most recent one I could find however even in 2019 when I was still in Mauritius they were still facing issues with the road due to it’s location. The article however states that as from now any new roads will undergo some geographical test before they start building since they had to spent so much on the further development of this road because the environmental impacts were not taken into consideration.
Then I thought that maybe it’s because Mauritius is a small country with a lack of knowledge and technology to do such projects and I came across the Dubai man made islands which comprises of a moon, two palm shaped islands and a series of small island that looks like the world. The project sounded very interesting and it would have in fact attracted a lot of tourists which will of course help in the economy of the country. However, after the completion of some of these islands they had to stop they project since it was creating some environmental and marine life concerns.
While harvesting the sand to create the islands it released a cloud of silt which was affecting many marine life and marine vegetation, and furthermore, researchers found that while digging for sands to create the islands, it could result in some land slides along the coasts. As a solution to this the Nakeel developers, those responsible for the project are planning to make an artificial underwater design to attract marine life in the region again but then again there’s the debate whether this will truly work or even further questions about possible threads such as the attraction of predators along with previous local animals which can turn the region into a dangerous area.
From this story I’ve concluded that any country when they are given with a new technology they will focus on using it to develop their status without even caring about the side effects. It is in fact part of design since this whole project was an infrastructural project whereby architectural and design itself is highly involved. They might succeed in bringing life back to the region with artificial aids but still they’ve already destroyed the native life out there when they began it.
Butler, R. (2005, August 23). Dubai’s artificial islands have high environmental cost. Mongabay. https://news.mongabay.com/2005/08/dubais-artificial-islands-have-high-environmental-cost/
Kanhye, A. (2018, December 20). Tronçon de la route entre Ripailles et Verdun : plus de 5 ans pour la réparation de 300 mètres. Le Defi Media Group. https://defimedia.info/troncon-de-la-route-entre-ripailles-et-verdun-plus-de-5-ans-pour-la-reparation-de-300-metres
Scott, A. (2016, March 03). LA Officials Bring The Hammer Down On Tiny Houses For Homeless. NPR. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2016/03/03/469054634/la-officials-bring-the-hammer-down-on-tiny-houses-for-homeless
This LA Musician Built $1,200 Tiny Houses for the Homeless. Then the City Seized Them. (2016, December 9). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE
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