These achievements were accomplished with today’s technology. With the energy cost reductions and improvements to both manufacturing and materials Scarcity Zero brings, the possibilities expand. We can sustainably prefabricate essentially whatever we want on massive scales, and we can build it better and less expensively than we can today. This enables us to dramatically advance our economy, society and infrastructure. But we can also ensure shelter as a resource – which brings us back to housing. At this scale of manufacturing prowess, building small residences on assembly lines becomes trivial.
For example, the images below show houses made from shipping containers – the same kind used to transport goods on trucks and cargo ships. Shipping containers are so inexpensive to make that in some cases, it’s actually cheaper to use new containers than it is to ship the empty ones back to their origin.[9] Thousands of containers nationwide are routinely left near shipping yards, prompting innovative architects to use them as housing:
Shipping containers are plentiful and, naturally, easy to transport. Each container is made from steel, which is extremely resilient and boasts a high load strength. With today’s energy, shipping, and manufacturing costs, a single-container home can be delivered for between $20,000-$40,000.[10] The last home on the previous page, for example, was fully constructed for less than $40,000.[11] If energy and material expense reductions are applied by way of Scarcity Zero, these costs would likely drop substantially.
Shipping containers are far from our only prefabricated housing option. U.S. tech startup ICON, for example, can prefabricate a 650-square-foot house in less than 24 hours at a cost of $10,000 or less.[12] They use a large 3D printer to pour a concrete mix layer by layer, creating a solid structure that’s significantly stronger than traditional stick-framed construction. The company has already built more than 800 homes in partnership with local communities in Bolivia, Mexico, Haiti, and El Salvador.[13] In developing nations, the company estimates homes like the ones below could be manufactured for less than $4,000.[14] ICON’s market sector is shared by companies in Russia,[15] Dubai[16] and Amsterdam that manufacture comparable models.[17]
The MADi corporation in Italy has taken a different approach, using folding joints to create small residences that can be set up in hours.
As a modular, standardized structure with a base cost below $40,000, MADi folding house shapes can be integrated together and extended to feature a wide array of configurations:
These advances in prefabricated residential construction have given our society a cost-effective method of manufacturing and transporting housing structures practically anywhere, especially structures built small enough to be deployed on smaller plots of land that are either publicly owned, extended via land grant or purchased using charitable funds – further increasing social utility and philanthropic value.