India's Tata group to launch 'world's cheapest homes' (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

India's Tata group says it will launch cheap housing that can be built within a week for 500 euros, according to Indian media reports.

A spokesman for Tata, which in 2009 launched the world's cheapest car, the Nano, said the pre-fabricated houses would help the rural poor buy a home.

Prototypes are already being tested with a view to launch by next year, the PTI news agency said.

Indian authorities say millions of homes are needed in rural areas.
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"It is quick house built in seven days if you have a patch of land. Basic model of 20 sq metres, with flat roof will cost around 500 euros (32,000 rupees; £440)," Sumitesh Das, Tata Steel's head of global research is quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.
***
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14172605




Time to remind ourselves that Buckminster Fuller was designing structures to be assembled in hours, or even minutes.

[elocs]

1. It was here this morning (you can kick it to the top of GD):

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1502441

[kentauros]

2. I love stuff like this!

And want to see it happen here. There are still some big roadblocks to it here, though. Primarily "building codes", and then resistance from the builders and contractors, and finally appraisers don't understand anything that's not a cookie-cutter house.

The other thing I see here that prevents prefab is that the designers of that format don't market to the middle-income and lower. Everything they touch is for upper incomes it seems. Marketing for the masses either isn't a money-maker, or the aforementioned problems to building are too much trouble and effort. And thus, too expensive.

If some group like Habitat for Humanity got behind the advent of building prefab homes and making them "common", I think much of the resistance to them here would soon evaporate :)

[eilen]

3. I hope they are better/healthier than the homes that

Clinton Foundation sent to Haiti