The Homestead House is a conceptual design that takes the prefabricated steel arch building system ordinarily found on agricultural properties, and reorganizes it into a modular, off-grid residential structure. The system is already commercially available, already engineered for structural strength, and already fire-resistant.
The arches and straight panels are formed from thin, recyclable steel sheets that bolt together with simple tools, requiring little skilled labor and no secondary support structure. The resulting shell is extremely strong despite using very little material.
A structure built this way can be fully disassembled and reassembled somewhere else for an entirely different purpose, which makes the material itself far more durable in the life-of-a-building sense than most conventional construction.
The individual arched modules cluster in different configurations to suit different needs, and the footprint isn’t fixed at the time of construction. A household that grows doesn’t have to move; rooms can be added one module or even one arch at a time. The structure can equally be reduced if circumstances change, making it genuinely responsive to the way life actually shifts over the years.
Insulating the steel shell involves erecting a second, lighter-gauge structure inside the outer one and blowing cellulose insulation, made from recycled newspaper, between the two layers to whatever depth the climate demands. The thickness is entirely adjustable, which means the same structural system works for a mild coastal site and an exposed inland location where winters are more severe.
The concept is designed to operate completely off the standard utility grid. Electricity comes from photovoltaic cells and a vertical-axis wind turbine. Passive solar design handles heating and cooling, domestic water is solar-heated, and rainwater collected from the roof arches feeds above- or below-ground storage.
The arch building system already exists, already has infrastructure behind it, and already serves an industry that needs strong, low-cost structures assembled quickly.
The Homestead House doesn’t ask for new materials, new tools, or new supply chains. It asks instead what happens when you apply a different kind of imagination to what’s already sitting in a farm equipment catalog.
You can read the original article at www.yankodesign.com