Dumpsters in suburban Michigan are much wealthier than dumpsters in some third world country.

Only one or two people can build their house out of scrap. It's not a sustainable strategy.

So...if a billion people already figured out how to build a house out of scrap, what good would those instructions be? Just give them the "utilities in a box" and let them run with it.

Probably depends on what you consider a "house."

AJ, I love the cave house idea. It also brings my mind back to the idea of using the best and longest lasting local materials. I often marvel at the housing methods where I live which are almost 100% stick frame houses with the odd straw bale thrown in for good measure. I have loves the idea of earth-block building but even that in this area wouldn't make much sense, when the land is a huge expanse of solid granite just below the topsoil. It is hard to walk through the forests without tripping over large amounts of loose rock.

While the initial workload is much higher a solid stone home or cave home will outlast pretty much any other building material. Given the incredible abundance of stone it would only make sense to see it use widely as an extremely strong and durable building material. I would love to see an open source granite saw or general purpose stone block cutter that could be used to turn rough stone into something more manageable, and something that could be used by one or two people. Here is an example of one:


In terms of passive and inexpensive homes the low impact development style of building embodies this to a T. The Lammas building project in the UK has a great video series documenting their own ecovillage low impact building project. Here is a video about one of the members and the house they build with ready available materials on the cheap. Its not the mythical $100, but in all likelihood one could do it cheaper than was done here.
http://www.livinginthefuture.org/index.php/40

Its unlikely that you will be able to find cheap universal materials in every location. And creating a cookie cutter house ends you up with the same housing issue you currently have where houses that are intended for warm climates are built in cold climates and vise versa. It would be better to focus on the modularity of house design rather than a whole unit. Designing a variety roof structures to be interchangeable with a variety of wall systems, and designing these varieties based on locally available building materials. So if you have four different roof designs and four different wall designs you would need a standard connection between roof and walls to make them universally interchangeable. Then a person just needs to pick the designs that can be sourced locally and they can build it in the most economic fashion.

One of the great things about low impact design is that is that it doesn't require a huge area to be flattened, ripped up, or removed. The buildings are creatively placed to allow the existing natural features of the land to aid in the construction of the building. This process requires creativity, and I would think that most highly efficient low carbon building requires this.

Well...as clever as Worldhaus might be, they're still in it for the money, which means they're still engineering in a profit margin. http://www.worldhaus.com/

I think by definition "universal" materials could be found anywhere :-P but I get your point. It seems like OSE isn't going to be able to come up with anything ground breaking in terms of low-cost housing design. That particular discipline is as old as humanity. I think OSE's contribution will be reducing the cost of the house itself by integrating it into the entire independent village economy. So... not so much "cheaper" as "money is less relevant."

I haven't been to India, but I suspect they're just as particular about what the homes they live in look like as anyone else. No one WANTS to live in an efficient little box that's identical to everyone else's box. People are WILLING to do so if they can't afford anything better.

As nice an idea as low impact design is, I doubt it will be all that relevant to the eventual shape of the GVCS. In order to squeeze onto a small plot of land the villagers are going to have to make the most of the area. To me, that strongly implies enforcing a detailed utilization plan on the area's natural resources; not letting nature do its thing and impacting it as little as possible. You can only let nature be nature when you aren't putting a strain on its resources. OSE's plan is to wring as much productivity out of the resources in a given area as possible. Sustainable design will put a limit on how far the natural environment can be replaced, but it places no limit on how far the natural environment can be rearranged.

You can't find information on passive solar? Or by "cheap materials" do you mean "not stick-built?" There's a lot of stuff here. Even free plans.

It seems like a key tradeoff is that you might be able to build/design a shelter that could work well anywhere on Earth; either through high-tech elements or simple modularity. However, you aren't going to be able to ship the shelter or the parts to anywhere in the world for a price that someone willing to live in a cookie-cutter minimalist home is going to be able to pay. Even if you air-dropped an inflatable structure it would still cost too much. You could still finance them via charitable donations, but that's outside the OSE paradigm.

I agree. That's what I meant by "...reducing the cost of the house itself by integrating it into the entire independent village economy."

Is any of this more like what you're looking for?

Cool. With domes you could even combine the wall/roof into one unit. Seems like you just can't get away from the need for a foundation, tho. Maybe add another category for "interior walls" since those don't necessarily have to be load bearing. Also, more categories like "plumbing" and "electrical" would help flesh it out.