Egg House Designer Told to Get Crackin'

An enterprising young architect has hit upon a cheap way to live in Beijing and beat the high rents. He's designed an "egg house" to sleep in but he's been told by the urban management officers to Get Crackin' and move his unusual dwelling.

Dai Haifei, a recent graduate, thought up the egg house design when he found that the cost of renting accomodation was too high. The sleeping place he designed has an egg shape, wheels underneath, bags with grass seed covering the exterior and a bamboo framework inside. There's no wiring or plumbing. He has located his egg on the boulevard outside his employers' offices and that's where the trouble is. He has no permission to place his egg in a public space.

Safe, affordable housing is an ongoing problem for many around the world. Many solutions and workable ideas have been tried. The Micro-Compact home kit made in Austria is a 2.6m cube. Cob houses, organic looking and built from the clay and earth of the land can be a low cost answer to avoiding a mortgage. Yet another idea for cheap housing is the use of pallets for the dwelling's building blocks. Free plans are online.

Human ingenuity has come up with many cheap ways to shelter in safety. Zoning regulations often prevent the building of the tiny houses where they are most needed, but safety and sanitation are reasons to have good regulations in place.

That house of straw that the first little pig built doesn't look so silly, now that straw bale houses covered in adobe are becoming more mainstream.