TESSELLAR > Blog

Chou's Bricks - just like LEGO!

2009-07-08T23:43:00.006+08:00

In addition to his load bearing tongue and groove blocks and his pre-stressed slabs, now he has an interesting new product - fairfaced cement bricks that have the same tongue and grooves.

These bricks are smaller lighter than the blocks, and much easier to work with. They also include special blocks that have voids for services that run horizontally and vertically.

These blocks are ideal for anyone who wants to build their own brick fencing. Chou tells me that they are non load-bearing, but still you could put in steel reinforced concrete in the voids, and they can also be combined with the thicker and stouter blocks.

All that's needed now is a someone prettier than Chou to lay the bricks.

Movie on Youtube

Architect vs "Feng Shui Master"

2009-06-18T11:39:00.005+08:00

“I won’t believe in feng shui any more after what had happened”, says an architect afflicted with particularly negative elements! This story is yesterday's The Star:

Luck runs out for architect
By YAZREEN HARON

KUALA LUMPUR: He was looking at feng shui to change his luck but the reversal of fortune not only left him RM29,260 poorer but without a girlfriend as well.

When the 36-year-old architect, known only as Ong, bought a house at Lakefield, Sungai Besi, his girlfriend recommended that he consult her feng shui master.

Ong went along with her wishes and soon met the feng shui master who told him that he had a spell of bad luck. The “master” promised to turn his luck around for a fee.

Ong promptly issued a cheque for RM29,260 to cover the feng shui expenses of the “master” who claimed that his services were sought worldwide.

After conducting some rituals at Ong’s new house at 10pm, the “master” told him not to speak of the session to anyone and not to sell the house for the next three years.

The “master” later demanded RM15,000 for an amulet to “protect” Ong and his girlfriend.

But before even receiving the amulet, Ong’s girlfriend told him that it was broken and RM30,000 was needed to replace it.

Feeling suspicious and believing that he had been cheated by the “master” and his girlfriend, Ong refused to pay and soon separated from his girlfriend of five years.

“I won’t believe in feng shui any more after what had happened,” Ong told a press conference organised by MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong.

“The police will be looking into Ong’s case,” said Chong.

Tata's Nano Homes

2009-06-14T23:44:00.006+08:00

We all know about the world's cheapest car from Tata Motors, which sells for less than USD2 500. Well Tata also dabbles in cheap, affordable homes!

These images are from their Shubh Griha project near Boisar in Maharahtra State, just over 100km north of Mumbai.

View in Google Map

The homes start from about USD8 200 for a very small 283sf studio unit, go up to USD10 600 for a 345sf studio, and USD14 300 for a 465 single bedroom unit. Tata is building 1,300 basic units at Boisar, and they are already oversubscribed.

283sf Studio

360sf Studio

465sf One Bedroom Flat

This is according to an article in the current edition of The Economist. Quoting from this article:

"India’s cities need at least 25m more homes, according to report from McKinsey, a consultancy, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce. In Mumbai, the commercial capital, more than 8m people now live in shantytowns, often paying substantial rent for the privilege. But buying a home of their own is way out of reach for most of them: a 70-square-metre flat in the centre of the city costs $500,000 or so.

The cost is being kept low chiefly because the flats are being built outside big cities, where land is much cheaper. Owners are expected to commute. The units are also very small and spartan. The simplest consist of a single room with a sink in the corner and a toilet behind a partition. They are in buildings of no more than three storeys, so there is no need for expensive structural works. Instead of bricks, lightweight moulded concrete blocks are used for the walls. The concrete is often made with foam, fly-ash or other waste materials to make it lighter as well as cheaper. There are no lifts and just one staircase per block. All this means that the homes can be built very quickly and with unskilled labour.

The developers say the potential for very cheap housing in India is huge. Many of those living in slums today are employed as drivers, factory workers or tailors, with incomes of around 90,000 rupees a year—easily enough to afford a flat which costs 200,000-400,000 rupees. According to Ashish Karamchandani of Monitor Group, another consulting firm, India has 23m urban families with incomes of 60,000-130,000 rupees a year. Including rural areas, Tata Housing sees an even larger market of 180m households earning between 90,000 and 200,000 rupees.

Until very recently one of the biggest hurdles was finance. Banks were unwilling to lend money to people without credit histories or proof of permanent residence. But two government-owned banks — the National Housing Bank and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development — have agreed to provide funds to finance companies so that they can offer mortgages to such buyers. To reduce risk, buyers must put down at least a quarter of the purchase price and employers must confirm their income. Borrowers are then charged little more interest than those with an established credit history."

All images are from Tata's project website.

Honeycomb Housing in North Johor?

2009-06-01T20:58:00.003+08:00

My office has been busy working for a month on a project in Johor that was supposed to be confidential. But news of it came out in TheStar, 29th May edition of the Metro Section (and two days before that in the Southern Edition) under the headline:

Plan for RM300m Furniture Complex on Bt Kangkar-Tangkak Road

From thestar.com.my

This is an exciting prospect where I have to demonstrate that the Honeycomb concept can be scaled up for a 140 acre site.

An Interruption...

2009-05-31T14:15:00.004+08:00

I’ve too busy this last two weeks and have not been posting!

My 75 year old father-in-law had to go into hospital. Mr. Ghazali (by coincidence we share the same name) had had a long history of high blood pressure and asthma, and for a couple of weeks beforehand, suffered from, what were to me, vague symptoms - anxiety, shallow breathing, water retention in the legs, sleepiness...

When finally it was decided to take him to hospital, he fell asleep on the way, and finally when he arrived at the hospital, did not wake up. By then his fingers had turned blue.

The immediate cause of the passing out was the high level of carbon dioxide in the blood. This showed in blood tests; drowsiness and bluishness in fingers and toes are common symptoms of CO2 poisoning.

He was put onto a ventilator to help with his breathing.

His other main symptom was difficulty in passing water, coupled with water retention (or oedema). So the doctors put on a catheter to drain away the urine and excess fluids from the body.

Ghazali’s condition looked bleak on the Saturday he was admitted. He was unconscious, was on a ventilator, and his whole body was swollen with oedema. But he responded to the most immediate treatment – the blood CO2 level came down and his swelling subsided and you could see his face and hands becoming wrinkly again. He could have woken up earlier but the doctors thought it better to keep him sedated – the ventilator worked better with the patient in this condition.

By Tuesday he was allowed to wake up and had a brain scan. They found that he had had a stroke!

But in the few days that followed it became apparent that the effects are turning out to be relatively minor. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of incapacity – my father-in-law can still speak and easily move both sides of his face and limbs. This is not what happens in severe cases of stroke. Thank God!

Ghazali can count himself lucky and he can look forward to coming back to our home. But his chronic high blood pressure stays with him. The latest reading was something like 167/65 (against 120/80 normal count). Such a big difference in the systolic (upper) and diastolic (lower) figures is symptomatic of hardened arteries. My wife has high blood pressure too, so I’m pestering her to get it down with diet and exercise, or else she should take medication.

This isn’t architectural blogging as usual, but often life (and death) has a way of intruding.

How much Families Earn and the Houses they can Afford

2009-05-17T21:41:00.003+08:00

This is a picture of Household Incomes in Malaysia:

This chart was based on figures given by a Minister in July 2008 in Parliament. It shows what educated middle-class people living in the capital city sometimes forget (that’s me specifically) – that many of our countrymen are still poor. I can’t quite imagine how families (8.6% of households) can survive on less than RM1000 (USD280) a month. According to these figures, more than a third of households earn less than RM2000 a month. From another report, the average household income is RM3686.

My friend Peter Davis at UPM had written on Housing Affordability - using a 3-year income rule of thumb to gauge affordability. He did not have the household income figures at the time, so he made an estimate based on per capita GDP, and average family income came to only RM2000 per year and the average affordable house, RM72 000. We both agreed that this figure seemed too low – perhaps the statisticians were not able to capture the informal income that sustained the poor. Perhaps the statisticians put in more resources to get accurate figures for higher (and taxable) income groups!

So I updated Peter’s picture of Affordable Houses and compared it with our “opportunity surveys" in Pekan, Sungei Petani and Kuantan. This is it:

The figures from our narrow, non-random opportunity surveys were not bad. We can understand why we got lower figures for the cheapest homes – maybe for the poorest families actually owning a house is not realistic or is even a priority (the really important thing would be to secure better income); maybe, as Peter suspected, their informal sources income has not been taken into account.

We can also understand why we didn’t pick up the demand for houses in the high end. The simple reason was that we there are not many rich people milling around Government offices – civil servants are not exorbitantly paid, and the wealthy can delegate the chores that require going to these offices.

Anyway, imperfect as it may be, this is our view at the sort of house prices Malaysian families can afford. But what are developers are bringing on to the market? That is for the next post...

The Honeycomb Townhouse as a cheaper alternative to the Single-Storey Terrace House

2009-05-13T23:02:00.005+08:00

Single storey terrace houses were the most common house-type for rural areas and small towns. In urban areas where land has become expensive, single storey houses are not common any more for new developments. Typically they occupied 20’X70’ plots of land and a few years ago would be priced at RM110,000 and below. However, they are expensive to build with a big area for footings and roof, a large party wall, and low density. Worse, they are perceived as less prestigious than two storey houses.

The Single storey terrace House: “IRIS GARDEN” priced about RM149,000 per unit at Bandar Saujana Putra in Selangor; from LBS Bina website

Now with building costs much higher than a few years ago, even developers in rural areas are shunning the single storey houses. The ones that get launched are also getting more expensive, leaving a gap in the supply of new houses in the RM80,000 to RM130,000 price range that used to be served by the single storey terrace houses.

There is a type of residential unit in Malaysia which is called a “townhouse”. Introduced in the 1980’s, it is actually a large terrace house with different owners on the ground and the first floors. This relatively new building type, is for people who can’t quite afford a terrace house, but do not want to live in flats.

The Terrace Townhouse: Townhouse at Bayu Permai in Rawang; from from GM Build website

We decided to come up with a Honeycomb version of the townhouse. What used to be a sextuplex house was divided into upstairs and downstairs units. These townhouses can fill an important niche in the market: while the usual kinds landed property – terrace, semi-detached and detached houses – are becoming more unaffordable for many people, they are not yet ready to accept living in apartments. At about 900sf built-up area, these can be an acceptable substitute for single–storey terrace houses. They are cheaper to build than single storey houses because they have more shared walls, floors and roof, and each unit takes up a smaller piece of land. I believe that they should be priced 10% cheaper than single storey houses.

The new Honeycomb Townhouse designs are an improvement on the terrace townhouses now already found in city areas. The terrace townhouses usually have only 22’ or 24’ frontages and this is too tight. The street fronting the townhouses has gate after gate along it: there is no space at all along the street for a second car, or indeed for any visitors. There is also too little external walls for proper ventilation and lighting for the rooms within them: the room layout gets very contorted as the various rooms compete for space for windows.

The Honeycomb Townhouse

The Honeycomb Townhouse has the advantage of being a corner unit with a garden to the side. There is more space for windows, and this makes the layout easier – there are enough external walls to provide windows for all the rooms. The Honeycomb Townhouse also has at least 30’ frontage. This means that after providing for the gates to the car-porches of the lower and upper floor units, there is still another 10’ to the side. In addition, the Honeycomb courtyard would mix quadruplex and sextuplex units, but only the sextuplex units are suitable for conversion to Townhouses (the quadruplex units have frontages which are too narrow). So the mixture of quadruplex and Townhouses becomes less crowded than a street of terrace townhouses.

There is another important advantage – the terrace townhouse has a rear garden for the ground floor unit but none at all for the first floor unit. But the Honeycomb Townhouse has a front garden for the upper floor unit and a rear garden for the lower ground unit!

Note for readers on Internet Explorer:
Sorry, my images did not appear in most of my posts: the images are now ok. To the person who complained - thanks very much!

Homes that more people can afford

2009-05-09T09:07:00.006+08:00

In last week's "Housing in Hard Times", I suggested that there are some things that we in the housing industry can do - one is to study the supply side and see how to reduce costs: and we looked at Chou's wall and floor building system. The other is to examine the demand side. An important consideration must be to study what customers can afford.

Affordability is something that professional economists study and the most common measure of it relates the cost of housing to income.

from http://www.realtor.org/research/research/housinginx

The current measure in the US shows that though house prices are tumbling down fast, people's income (at least in aggregate) are still holding steady. So there is a silver lining to the current recession: housing in the US has become so much more affordable.

My friends at UPM and I took another view; and we came upon it almost by accident. It was a by-product of work we were doing with consumer preference surveys. Our aim was to gauge consumer acceptance of our new Honeycomb houses, and we were comparing it with conventional terrace houses.

At first we just compared a single type of house, but eventually we developed a wider range of Honeycomb house types including Honeycomb flats to compare with conventional products.

With a choice of houses that people could look at, we started by asking a simple, very direct question - what sort of house can you afford? Respondents were given a choice of answers: apartments from RM40 000, townhouses from RM80 000, double storey houses from RM 110 000, and so on.

With the answer given, the enumerator would show the brochures of the relevant Honeycomb and conventional house type, and then would go on with questions on the preferences of the respondent.

Beyond the issue of Honeycomb versus conventional houses, it was interesting to just look at what people said they could afford. These are the results from two surveys done in 2007 in district towns in Sungei Petani in the State of Kedah and Pekan in Pahang:

This sort of information should be useful for developers. Yet for a variety of reasons, this is not what developers are providing. They tend to be building houses that cost more than RM170 000. On top of that they build low cost houses that sell between RM35 000 to RM65 000 that Government rules require them to build. We will be looking at this situation later.

Kuala Lumpur's Commercial Area: Past and Future

2009-05-05T22:19:00.004+08:00

This is Kuala Lumpur (KL) towards the end of the 19th Century when it was just a small town with not that many blocks of shop houses.

The main roads led north to Rawang, South-West to Klang, to South-East to Cheras, and West to Ampang.

According to Mr. Ho Chin Soon, "Pudu Village" was so far out of town that civil-servants going there could claim outstation allowance! Of course, Pudu is now considered as part of the inner-city.

The city's commercial activities expanded mainly along the trunk roads towards the North, South_West and South East. The corridor West towards Ampang grew mainly as a residential area.

That is until the 70's (when I was still in school), when private developers turned it into a high-rise commercial district - aptly called the "Golden Triangle". It's pretty built-up now.

As for the future, Ho mapped out the impediments to growth - the swathes of entrenched residential areas, Government owned land and reserves for cemeteries, parks, etc. And the areas left over are the likeliest places for the Golden Triangle to spill over to.

The maps are Ho Chin Soon's, see his excellent website at www.hochinsoon.com/

A Cheaper Way to Build

2009-05-03T14:47:00.004+08:00

As an architect, I have been familiar with Industrialized Building systems since 1985. The promoters of the many systems all claim their particular method of construction to be superior in terms of cost, speed and quality. And I have learned to be sceptical.

But the system that most impressed me is based on a very simple concept and it was invented by a fellow Malaysian. I first used Chou Kan Yin’s system of tongue and groove blocks for Staff Housing in Universiti Industri Selangor, and the project was completed in 2003. The results were impressive!

Chou’s concrete blocks slide neatly into each other to form straight walls – something that our workers cannot do with bricks and mortar.

Steel bars for beams, stiffeners and lintels run through the hollows found in the block. Similarly, the wiring and pipes can be put in place without hacking, plus power point casings and water pipe outlets are pre-installed into special blocks at the factory.

With drawings that describe the location of every block, complete with the running of steel bars, wiring and concealed plumbing, building a house is like playing with Lego!

Chou has improved on wall system by adding a simple method for constructing upper floors without formwork. He is now manufacturing 2 inch thick planks that use pre-stressed concrete which use much less steel. These planks are craned into position before being topped up with another layer of reinforced concrete that is poured on site.

No formwork is required, and the floors become waterproof as the wet concrete seals the gaps between the planks.

Together, the wall and floor system produces an accurate building structure without mess. The walls and ceilings only need a thin layer of skim-coating to give a smooth finish. Tiles can also be easily laid on the floors or walls without having to repair the underlying surfaces.

Oh yes, about costs...

Compared to using reinforced concrete columns and beams, the most common method of construction in Malaysia, Chou's block system uses some 60% less steel. As for the slabs, overall his prestressed concrete planks, plus the lightly reinforced concrete topping, uses 40% less steel compared to normal reinforced concrete slabs.

Many system builders claim their system to be cheaper because their system is in some way involves a more efficient process. But its very difficult to quantify this sort of cost saving. In the case of Chou's building system, the savings are much easier to analyse: he just uses less steel.

Mostly, Industrialized Building Systems are used in big projects to take advantage of economies of scale. But the special thing about Chou’s system is that it can be used for even a small bungalow!

He calls his system CKY IBS... this is his website:
http://www.ckyibs.com/

Housing in Hard Times

2009-04-29T21:59:00.008+08:00

Mr. Ho Chin Soon talked mainly about the slowing, but not (yet?) collapsing demand for houses. But what about supply?

He did produce an interesting slide about oil prices last year.

The sharp spike in oil prices brought with it steep increases in building materials.

This was a bewildering time for developers, quantity surveyors and, yes, architects - we had never seen prices go haywire before.

The problem of building costs going up hurts most when it costs more to put up a new building compared to just buying an existing one available in the market; at that point, the cost of building new houses exceeded the market price of existing houses, and there was no shortage of properties for sale as highlighted in Mr. Ho's talk. No surprise - projects for new housing slowed down or simply stalled.

One year on, this problem has persisted although circumstances has changed. The price of building materials have come down, following the plummet in oil prices, but demand has dipped too.

Thestar online

By my own (unprofessional economist) reckoning, the cost of building new houses is still above what similar properties, already built, can be bought for. It is generally true in Malaysia, and probably true all round the world.

Is there hope?

The overall picture is dire, but here and there, some are able to do better than others. Sime Darby Properties launched anaggressive sales campaign. They started with clearing out their existing inventory of unsold properties, but from the latest reports, they are selling newly launched projects too.

Thestar online

It helps that houses are not a commodity; savvy developers market them as highly differentiated products, very much unlike whatever else there is on the market. They compete on location, some design feature, brand name, and so on, not just on price.

As someone promoting Tessellation Planning, it helps that the Honeycomb houses – the sextuplex, quadruplex and duplex units – are genuinely unlike anything else that is currently available on the market. We will soon see when the Maran and Nongchik projects finally get launched in a few months!

Another thing that can help is technology - a cheaper and better way to build. A friend of mine, Chou Kan Yin has developed a building system for walls and floors that doing that will be the subject of my next post...

Prospects for property in Malaysia

2009-04-26T19:45:00.003+08:00

I love maps, but there is another Malaysian who loves them even more. That person is Ho Chin Soon. A valuer by profession, he has made maps his business. But more of that in a later post.

In March , I had the chance tom see him speak at a property exhibition in the Mid Valley Mall in Kuala Lumpur. He talked about the prospect for property market in Malaysia during this global recession.

His message was very simple:

Yes, times are bad in the States with the financial crisis. There is usually a six month delay between happens in the real economy in the US and Malaysia. Seeing that a large part of the crisis in the States has stemmed from a property bubble, how will Malaysia be affected?

In his opinion, the property in Malaysia has been largely flat since the last recession in 1998.He suggests that the local events in the past couple of years had kept down the values of stocks and properties, whilst Singapore and many other countries enjoyed a boom.

He pointedly drew contrast the large rises in the rents and prices of properties in Singapore in the last decade and the measly increases here.

There are exceptions of course, and the development around KLCC is one. There is at least least one project where work has been deferred indefinitely.

“No bubble here” is his conclusion. That is not to say that we are immune to financial stress; certainly the reduction in export incomes will affect the economy. The level of bank’s non-performing loans has not shown a substantial increase. Nor has he noticed an increase in properties for auction. Both these things will take time to work through the system. Prices will fall, but not as much as has fallen in Singapore.

Meanwhile, the main bargains to be had are those on offer from big developers who are keen to unload their unsold properties.

Starting again

2009-04-23T12:20:00.005+08:00

I started using Google blogger in March, 2007 and spent about three months feverishly building up a series of ‘blogs’ on “Tessellation Planning”. They were not really blogs, but websites about different aspects tessellation planning and some of the on-going projects that just happened to be set up using the blogger tool. I was able to link them all together under a single title, “Tessellar”, a navigation bar and a uniform look.

I then discovered that my websites weren’t really attracting many people! It is something that hits any beginner.

So I started blogging as a way to get more readers. I picked “vernacular architecture” as a theme. This was a topic that interested me. But also I was keen to pick up readers from as many countries as possible, and I hypothesized that if I wrote about say, mud-huts in Africa, I might pick up interest from Africans. As it turned out, I picked up readers from all over the world.

But putting up two to four posts each week was very time-consuming. By May 2008, I stopped.

Economists in the US now trace the beginning of the current recession to the 4th quarter of 2007, but most people got its first inkling only in September, 2008 when the US government let Lehman Brothers go belly-up. Here in Malaysia, people in the housing industry got our first wind of bad, bad times in early 2008 when building prices went haywire. Construction costs seemed to be going up and up with no end in sight, and developers just stopped in their tracks. Work for architects and town-planners started to dry up, and practices like mine have had to hunker down and wait till the storm blows over.

Many on my staff left to further their studies, a few others resigned, and the ones still with the firm understand that times are hard. Happily for me, in the past year I had been able to grow lean without too much heartache. The storm is still not over yet, but I see specks of light in the far horizon: architects like me are in the futures business.

It’s time to start blogging again!

The Best Lamp Posts in Malaysia

2008-11-23T02:47:00.004+08:00

Reissued with Google Map

libromanic.com

The most beautiful lamp posts in Malaysia can be said to be found in the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. It appears as if every road there must have lamp posts with its own distinctive design.

polytikus.com

But the signature lamp posts along with the signature bridges and buildings, do not make this new city a place that I would like to live in (even if I could afford to buy a decent house there)!

www.daylife.com

For me, the most interesting lamposts are along the Middle Ring Road, alongside Taman Melawati.

View Larger Map

On my way home from monthly trips to Kuantan, usually just before dusk, I always look out for big birds that like to perch on the lamp posts along a 2 to 3 kilometer stretch of this road. And I've wondered about them for a long time...

Ani Mardiastuti

Yesterday was Labour Day holiday. On a family outing to the zoo, I've discovered that they are Milky Storks or 'Burung Upeh Botak' (bald upeh bird). There was a large flock of them on an island in the zoo's lake. They are not fenced in, so sometimes they fly out.

"The globally threatened Milky Stork 'Mycteria cinerea' faces extinction in the wild in Malaysia, according to Yeap Chin Aik of the Malaysian Nature Society.
The species is a predominantly a coastal resident in Indonesia and Malaysia, inhabiting mangroves and adjacent swamps.....(but) these tidal forests are threatened by agricultural conversion and development schemes, particularly large-scale fish farms, tidal rice cultivation, logging and related disturbance".

www.birdlife.org

This bit of information makes me more eager to look out for these birds anytime I'm in the neighbourhood!

Circular and Hexagonal Farms

2008-08-04T22:44:00.004+08:00

I found this spectacular view of irrigated farms in Libya from deputydog

"Center pivot irrigation is basically a method of agricultural irrigation which results in a circular field of crops. a huge column of sprinklers, fixed to the ground at one end, slowly travels around in a circle whilst spraying the crops below. you can see the sprinkler arms, some of which can reach a kilometre in length".

The hexagonal forms look like they are made up of clusters of houses in the middle and farmland radiating out.

View Larger Map

Re-inventing the Cul-de-sac

2008-07-01T23:02:00.005+08:00

I've been really busy this last few months: it's hard work trying to get the honeycomb projects moving. And so blogging has been getting more difficult.

But i've only noticed that the Honeycomb concept was featured in Tree Hugger in a feature titled "re-inventing the cul-de-sac" posted by Lloyd Alter.

So thanks Lloyd!

The post attracted 15 comments, and I'm reproducing them here. I'm grateful for the positive comments, but even the critical ones are useful.

Chris H. said:

I like the idea of higher density, but it seems to me that there are still the issues of car dependence and that it doesn't lend itself to redevelopment and change. I still don't know what's wrong with the grid system, especially when the terrain lends itself to it. There aren't any commercial amenities nearby to anyone such as groceries, restaurants, or entertainment venues so the automobile is still going to be the main blight... er... source of transportation

I guess what it boils down to for me is that high density sprawl is still sprawl, and therefore still the problem. I appreciate what he is trying to do, but as gas prices continue to rise for most of the world, the cul-de-sac just seems like the wrong thing to encourage.

April 7, 2008 1:22 PM

Kearns said:

I'd live there.

Wonder if my boss would let me work remote from Malaysia?

April 7, 2008 2:52 PM

nobody's perfect said:

I still disagree with the usage of cul-de-sac being propagated here. A cul-de-sac is simply the end of street circle. You can have higher density townhomes on cul-de-sacs, or even an apartment building.

April 7, 2008 4:45 PM

Damon said:

@ nobody's perfect: you can, but how often do you? And like Chris mentioned, low density is not the only problem of this layout.

April 7, 2008 8:35 PM

Roland said:

There's a type of dutch street called a woonerf, that has all the benefits of a cul-de-sac (slowed traffic and...well that's it isn't it?) plus more. The idea is to put obstacles in the path of the cars to slow them down to below 20 mph. This allows pedestrians and bicyclists to share the street with the cars. The street then becomes a social space rather than a highway. They haven't caught on in the US, because drivers don't like the idea of slowing down that much. But, ironically, that is exactly what the beloved cul-de sacs do. They slow drivers down, which increases safety.
April 7, 2008 8:45 PM

Dan said:

See, now these are the types of grids I always wanted to make in SimCity. I imagined hexagonal residential spaces like these with commercially zoned triangles between them. Damn those square grid limitations.

April 8, 2008 12:15 AM

Nathan Blair said:

I love the idea, but I don't see why it would eliminate the need for cars, or reduce sprawl. It looks cool though, and I'd have no problem moving to a subdivision like that.
April 8, 2008 2:00 AM

I don't understand why you think cul-de-sac has to mean car dependency and sprawl. But then not being American I don't see the square grid as being "normal".

Surely in a grid, having roads on all sides and greater road access, promotes car use. I think you are connecting the layout with other aspects of the situation in which it is normally used (in your experience). So, I don't see it is the street pattern that influences it - it is the nearness to facilities, the size of plots, etc.

The layout is surely not the key to what happens - whather grid, dead-end or the normal for Europe (wiggly roads and odd angles, some dead-end, some through).

April 8, 2008 11:35 AM

anonymous said

The point of buying a house on a cul-de-sac is that you get a larger yard and less traffic. If you increase the housing density then appeal is gone. Nobody wants to live at the end of the road because it's the end of the road. Just think of trying to find a house in that maze!

My parents live on a cul-de-sac. A lot of their traffic is kids on skates and bikes.

April 8, 2008 12:15 PM

Josh said:

The reason why cul-de-sacs translate into car dependency and sprawl is a lack of connectivity. Compare the ratio of legs (raod segments) to nodes (intesections). Connected landscapes will have more nodes per leg while disconnected landscapes will have fewer nodes per leg. Disconnected landscapes mean that people will often have to travel further (by the way the ant walks) to reach their destinations. This translates into using a car more often. On the other hand, connected landscapes make the trips shorter and promote walking. (Remember how roads are used by both cars and pedestrians, as well as bicycles, etc.)
The first cul-de-sacs had meaningful destinations within them (such as small grocery stores and other services); modern cul-de-sacs do not. In order to reinvent the cul-de-sac and make it meaningful as a small enclave of a community, we must remember that a community invilves more than just residences.

April 8, 2008 1:20 PM

Anonymous sustainable coward said:

mmm... I find this 'planned' geometric format as distasteful as the grid system that has propogated over the US. The proposition that 'environmentalists dislike cul-de-sac's' an absurd generalisation. I live in a cul-de-sac, in a village in Europe where the streets evolved in line with the local geography, not due to some artificial town planners lego-set.

I cycle everywhere, and get the train to the local town if I need to. I don't have a car. My life is not more energy intensive or car dependent. The vegetables and fruit I grow in my garden are distinctly low-carbon (or is that 'energy secure'?)

Please think a little about context before committing to large sweeping generalisations based on US car loving lifestyles. I do like the 'green spaces' idea though. I find that we interact with our neighbours and share much more because we all look out for one another - stick that in your high rise city boxes and smoke it.

The 'city bias' in Treehugger can be quite unimaginative at times.

c'mon guys... your're better than this.

April 8, 2008 1:27 PM

dan rossini, Diocese of LaCrosse said:

Each post gets a certain number of ad dollars for each viewing. The more viewers per page, the more $$ for Treehugger.com.

Therefore, since the previous post was so popular, they will continue to talk about this silly subject and roll in the cash. Because I think 95% of us readers can agree that this is pretty much a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream to get builders to modify current modern building techniques like cul-de-sacs with this website. But it will generate views, that's for sure.

I fell for it. Count me in for adding a few extra dollars to Treehugger.com's profits... that is Discovery Communications, the cable programming giant's pockets. Cha-ching!

April 8, 2008 1:49 PM

Mayyie said:

I like his use of the tesselar hexagon.
April 9, 2008 1:05 AM

dyspeptic said:

I still want to know what type of housing the writer lives in.

Minimizing paved surface is a good idea. It is at odds with this connectivity idea, though. That geometric grid has more paved area per living unity than any cul-de-sac arrangement I've ever seen. Why aren't we greening the car instead of shortening drives?

My observation of planned co-housing communities is that they are just cul-de-sacs with more fences, not less, and just as many cars. But one is cool and the other is not. It is all class signalling - 100%.

LA: the writer of this post (not the original writer at the Star) lives in a detached house, downtown, on a 30 foot wide lot, on a street that is part of the urban grid. My mother in law lives on a cul-de-sac and my wife tells me that it was an absolutely wonderful place to grow up. My mother-in-law is now old and has to maintain a car because there is not a single store within walking distance. Where we live, there are three large grocery stores and more variety stores than you can count within a ten minute walking radius, and half the people on the street don't have cars. the cul-de-sac is lovely, fun, great for kids but is simply not sustainable.

April 11, 2008 6:55 PM

The end of the coin-operated laundry?

2008-06-14T11:22:00.003+08:00

"Sure, saving water is great and all, and everybody loves the environment, but a new technology coming out of Leeds University might allow for millions of apartment dwellers to finally have their own washing machine and dryer.

I don't know about the U.K., but here in the States, I've found many apartments simply are not set up for installing a washer and dryer. Landlords typically pay the water bill, so even if the infrastructure is there, the enthusiasm for laundry capabilities usually is not".

"All that is set to change if this new washing machine works as well as it claims. Users would simply insert some detergent and only one cup of water. A cartridge delivers thousands of small, reusable plastic chips (or granules) that would then absorb the dirt and water. Not only does the technology promise to clean your clothes, but also at the end of the cycle the load would be "virtually dry", eliminating the need for a separate dryer.

It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see the potential for this new spin on an old chore. The technology, dubbed Xeros, is already being compared to the Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner, which revolutionized the home cleaning industry when it was first released in the mid-1990s. The inventor, Professor Stephen Burkinshaw, is already in talks with commercial partners and hopes to see his idea become commercially viable as soon as next year. It would seem that for space-challenged apartment dwellers the future finally looks bright--without having to lug a closet full of laundry down the street".

Source: The end of the coin-operated laundry? | Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets - CNET Blogs

Igloos - an Inspiration

2008-05-26T21:31:00.003+08:00

The igloo could be earliest form of the monolithic dome. It is an efficient structure - with the spherical section you get to enclose the home with the minimum amount of material. The natural strength of the arc carries the roof.

And it makes use of a material that is easily found.

wikimedia.org

The Mellon Arena is an indoor arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is also informally known as ‘The Igloo’. This arena has a special dome where 6 stainless steel arc panels retract to form an outdoor venue.

www.alongdrive.com

Another example is Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church also known as the ‘Igloo Church’ in Inuvik, Canada. The church is built on permafrost and in order to avoid the layer of ice from melting, a double layer shell is placed on top of a gravel-filled saucer-like structure that is set into the ground.

Contributed by Kim Casey

Inside the Igloo

2008-05-21T22:56:00.007+08:00

As a snow storm rages outside, the Inuits stay warm and cozy in an igloo. This remarkable phenomenon is due to the way the igloo was built. An igloo can be divided into 3 levels which are the floor level, the subterranean level and an iqliq which is a raised platform of same width with the dome of the igloo.

A tunnel is made accessible to the inside of an igloo and must be lower than the floor level. This is because the cold air that enters the tunnel will stay in the tunnel and will not be able to enter the igloo as cold air sinks and hot air rises. Sometimes, the tunnel entrance may be accessed by a subterranean channel or by an angled tunnel. The opening however is ensured to be small to reduce the possibility of cold air from entering once the snow block or bear-skin door is opened.

To keep warm, some Inuit groups line the inside of the igloo with caribou hides for better heat insulation. With the addition of blubber lamps, bodyheat and a stove for making tea, the internal temperature of an igloo can hit 15.5°C or more even though the outside temperature may be -40°C.

Paul Oliver

In order to avoid the cold, the Inuit family will sit on the iqliq with their backs to the wall and legs extended but not overhanging. This platform will also be covered with moss and sealskins or hides to ensure warmth.

Contributed by Kim Casey
Reference: Paul Oliver, "Dwellings", Phaidon Press, 2003

The Inuit Igloo

2008-05-18T00:09:00.004+08:00

www.alaska-in-pictures.com

The igloo is an intriguing structure made from thick slabs of tightly packed, dry snow. It forms the shape of a dome that, amazingly, is able to stand without additional support or the probability of caving in. It is a normal dwelling place of the Inuits during the winter season. The building of an igloo requires skill, a lot of energy and a large knife or a snow saw, known as an orsulung. It can be built from the outside but is said to be preferred form the inside, especially during a blizzard. A snow slab varies in measurements, depending on the size of the igloo.

wikipedia.org

First, a few snow blocks similar in size are arranged in a circle with enough space for habitation and a gap for the entrance. The first layer is then cut in a slight upward and inward curve to enable a continuous build of a dome shape. The last block, also known as the key block, which would be placed on top of the igloo, must initially be larger than the hole for it to be placed topside down. The completed igloo is powdered with snow to seal any gaps and a few ventilation holes are made. Inside the igloo, a lower level and a tunnel is cut out to prevent the cold air from entering.

Paul Oliver, "Dwellings", Phaidon Press, 2003

The thawing and freezing of the snow on the igloo will form a smooth layer of ice, making the structure stronger.

Contributed by Kim Casey

The Interior Design of a Quadruplex House

2008-05-09T23:18:00.006+08:00

This is an early proposal by my colleague Zaman. It is the quadruplex at the hillside Honeycomb project in Johor Baru.

SLIDESHOW

What do you think?

An Escher Tessellation

2008-05-08T23:31:00.004+08:00

This is a detail copied from a print by Dutch artist M.C.Escher. It's an interlocking pattern of the weird shapes of a fish and a bird. Looks like a complicated creation, doesn't it?

Yet you can also see it a regular pattern of diamond shaped polygons (or trapeziums). And there are two basic patterns: one dominated by the black fish pattern, and the other dominated by the image of the white bird (or is it a fish with wings?).

Each of these patterns can be thought of as a tile; the complete images of the bird or fish are formed only when the tiles are placed next to each other.

The effect of arranging these tiles together is shown here. This process is called tiling, or tessellation.

Thanks to my son, Nazri, who produced the GIF images

Lamp Posts in Malaysia

2008-05-01T23:28:00.010+08:00

libromanic.com

The most beautiful lamp posts in Malaysia can be said to be found in the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. It appears as if every road there must have lamp posts with its own distinctive design.

polytikus.com

But the signature lamp posts along with the signature bridges and buildings, do not make this new city a place that I would like to live in (even if I could afford to buy a decent house there)!

www.daylife.com

For me, the most interesting lamposts are along the Middle Ring Road, alongside Taman Melawati.

On my way home from monthly trips to Kuantan, usually just before dusk, I always look out for big birds that like to perch on the lamp posts along a 2 to 3 kilometer stretch of this road. And I've wondered about them for a long time...

Ani Mardiastuti

Yesterday was Labour Day holiday. On a family outing to the zoo, I've discovered that they are Milky Storks or 'Burung Upeh Botak' (bald upeh bird). There was a large flock of them on an island in the zoo's lake. They are not fenced in, so sometimes they fly out.

"The globally threatened Milky Stork 'Mycteria cinerea' faces extinction in the wild in Malaysia, according to Yeap Chin Aik of the Malaysian Nature Society.
The species is a predominantly a coastal resident in Indonesia and Malaysia, inhabiting mangroves and adjacent swamps.....(but) these tidal forests are threatened by agricultural conversion and development schemes, particularly large-scale fish farms, tidal rice cultivation, logging and related disturbance".

www.birdlife.org

This bit of information makes me more eager to look out for these birds anytime I'm in the neighbourhood!

Detached Honeycomb Houses

2008-05-01T22:22:00.003+08:00

Detached houses (Single Family Homes in the US, bungalows in Malaysia) can be arranged in hexagonal grids too. The basic module is a triangle comprising a private garden in the backyard, the house itself with agarage at the side, the driveway and frontyard, the pedestrian footpath, the road and a small public green area.

These houses have narrow fronts, but have wide backyards. All houses face a courtyard with a small green area in the middle - small but big enough for a large tree.

Four houses are arranged around each courtyard; the courtyards are then layed out on a triangular grid to create a neighbourhoods.

The houses here are quite small. The building setbacks are below Malaysian standards for individual land titles, but they're ok for group or 'strata' titles.

History of Nong Chik

2008-04-21T00:00:00.002+08:00

The hillside Honeycomb project in Johor Bahru is in an old part of the city. Old government quarters will be demolished to make way for new housing. Not everyone looks forward to the change: there are memories here...

So I did a little research.

Syed Muhammad Alsagoff (1836- 1906) and Maharaja (later Sultan) Abu Bakar of Johor (reigned 1862-95)

Syed Muhammd Alsagoff, also known as Nong Chik, obtained concession land in Johor Bahru and gave his name to the kampong that he established. He was the grandson of Tuan Syed Abdul Rahman Alsagoff, an Arab businessman from Hadramaut in Yemen who came to the new British colony of Singapore with his son, Syed Ahmad, in 1824.

Syed Abdul Rahman established Alsagoff & Company in Singapore in 1848 which traded in spices, rubber, sago, coffee, coco, pineapples and others.

Apart from trading it also had a plantation, the largest sawmill in the region and the Straits Cycle & Motor Company.

When Syed Abdul Rahman died, all his business were inherited by Syed Ahmad. Syed Ahmad married Raja Siti, the daughter of Hajah Fatimah of Sulawesi who was herself a rich business woman who owned many cargo ships.

When Hajah Fatimah died, her business was run by her son-in-law Syed Ahmad, adding to his wealth.

Syed Ahmad had three girls and one boy. When he died in 1875, the family's wealth was passed down to Syed Muhamad Alsagoff.

Syed Muhammad Alsagoff was close to Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor; apart from the Nong Chik land, he also received a large concession in Kukup. He set Constantinople Estates which grew rubber, sago, cocoa and pepper. He even received permission from the Sultan to issue his own currency at the Costantinople Estate!

One Dollar. Notice the Arabic Chinese and English used on the note!

Source: kukupnet.tripod.com