EcoBlocks

Truly proud to collaborate with Plastics for Change, a wonderful organization based in Bangalore with an innovative model that leverages Brands to create a demand for fair-trade plastic.

Hopefully in the not-so-distant future the plastic product you use every day will proudly claim to be made of fair-trade recycled plastic! No more virgin plastic is needed...we have enough already!

http://www.plasticsforchange.org/

For those unfamiliar with roof tiles, the photo below is of Mangalore tiles (common in India, especially the south). Their advantage is being water proof yet allowing ventilation, without the requirement of screws or nails. This is an easy first design to use, since it's already widely adopted. The next photo shows how they hang and overlap.

I hope this shows how easily we can do this with plastic, and the right mold!

If you know me, you know I love the small house movement. Maybe that's why I'm working in slums. But this is no slum, only a few blocks from where I'm living, a house with 7 people in barely an 8x12 ft space.

Which brings me to the question, how much is privacy worth, and what does it get us? Corny to say it brings us together, or that we learn to live with what truly matters.

But how long can the global disparity last? Maybe this is the future, the only sustainable way to live, keeping in consideration the rising cost of infrastructure, basic amenities, and labor in the global south. How bad would it be to sleep in the same room with your siblings and grandmother?

While design might not be here in particular, I firmly believe that it can replace, or do better than, space itself.

The goal, after the roof tiles, is to build smarter homes where no one is cramped and no one is lonely.