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Tiny wooden cabin in Cape Town was assembled on-site in three weeks

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Nestled at the bottom of a rocky hillside is a tiny wooden cabin surrounded by cypress trees and buchus. The little home overlooks Muizenberg, one of Cape Town’s best-known surfing spots, and occupies 390-square-foot of space. The stunning view can be enjoyed owing to the windows seat that has been added to the space. It was designed by architect Alexander McGee and is located next to his South African home.

Designer: Alexander McGee

“We’re spoiled in South Africa with some of the most naturally beautiful sites found anywhere in the world. As an architect, I view it as my responsibility to demonstrate an alternate solution to settling in these environments,” said McGee. And, this is the reason why the roof of the home has been topped with solar panels – to provide the cabin and the main home with power. No gutters have been added to the roof, and this allows McGee and his family to watch the rainwater run off the roof from different angles.

At first, the home was an interesting experiment for McGee. How well and how fast could he craft a house in a remote location? To do so, McGee and his team built the entire home off-site in a warehouse, where they could play around and experiment with the details and make different modifications and customizations, before finally assembling the cabin on-site. McGee abandoned the traditional brick-and-mortar and instead opted for lightweight cross-laminated timber (CLT) to construct the home. The home provides excellent thermal and sound insulation and creates almost zero waste during the construction process. “Some view it (CLT) as the building industry’s only savior in achieving a near carbon-neutral footprint,” said McGee. The home took less than three weeks to assemble on-site!

The home features a 45-degree pitched roof with huge eaves which creates sufficient space for a standing mezzanine level, that can be accessed via a retractable ladder. “Even though the bed does not have a base, the elevated nature of it makes you feel incredibly safe. It is almost nestlike,” added McGee. The home has been outfitted with plenty of storage space. It features a Wawa wood surfboard, handcrafted in Muizenberg, as well as loads of hanging space for clothes. Salvaged materials were introduced wherever possible in the home – for example, the cedar shelving in the bathroom comes from a scrapyard, whereas the reclaimed travertine sink in the kitchen was taken from a stonemason friend of McGee’s.

The post Tiny wooden cabin in Cape Town was assembled on-site in three weeks first appeared on Yanko Design.

Connecting Cape Town: Inside South Africa’s TV white spaces experiment

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Connecting Cape Town Inside South Africas TV white spaces experiment

In 2011, a United Nations commission came to a powerful conclusion: access to broadband internet is a basic human right, matched by the likes of housing, sustenance and healthcare. Arguments can be made that widespread access has transformed entire economies while kick-starting others, with Finland even going so far as to command its ISPs to provide 1 Mbps connections to all homes regardless of location. Both the United States and the United Kingdom have similarly ambitious plans, and all three of these countries have one particular catalyst in common: funds.

The harsh reality, however, is the economies that stand to gain the most from sweeping internet adoption are also the least equipped to enable it. In early 2010, the European Bank estimated that a project to roll out passive optical fiber to 33 cities in the Netherlands would cost nearly €290 million. The mission driving such funding? "To stimulate innovation and keep Europe at the forefront of internet usage." It's the answer to a problem that could undoubtedly be categorized as "first world," but consider this: Internet World Stats found that 92.9 percent of The Netherlands' population routinely used the world wide web in 2012. Let's just say it's easier to invest in an initiative that you're certain nearly 9 in 10 citizens will use.

In the whole of Africa, just 15.6 percent of residents are connected to the internet, which is under half of the world average. It's also home to vast, inhospitable landscapes that are economically inviable to crisscross with fiber. All of that being said, nearly a sixth of the globe's population resides on the continent, representing a monumental opportunity for something -- anything -- to connect the next billion people. As it turns out, there are actions presently ongoing to make a significant mark in the course of history. Google, Microsoft, Carlson Wireless, Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET) and a host of other powerful entities are collaborating to bring high-speed internet to an underserved continent via TV white spaces -- a low-cost, highly adaptable technology that's poised to explode. For now, Cape Town, South Africa, is acting as a proving ground for what will eventually be a far larger experiment. The core goal is actually quite simple: to beam hope to a disconnected society, with unused bands between TV channels acting as the medium. %Gallery-slideshow67067%

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