MIT'S AFFORDABLE LOW COST HOUSING PROJECT BUILDS FIRST PROTOTYPE PINWHEEL HOUSE IN CHINA

Massachusetts Institute of Technology  launced in 2009, "1K House" project challenged designers to come up with affordable, sustainable housing for U.S. $ 1000, that can improve conditions for the billions of people in the world living on less that $1 per day.  The prototype called 'Pinwheel House', designed by Ying Chee Chui,  a graduate of  March 2011 from MIT’s Department of Architecture, has been constructed in Mianyang, in Sichuan Province, China.

“It’s part of the responsibility of an architect, to create these spaces for people to live. It’s from the heart.” says Chui, now an architectural practioner in New York. The Pinwheel House prototype cost  over $5,000, because it is larger than Chui’s original design - about 800 square feet, rather than 500 square feet. The smaller version of the house could be built for about $4,000, says Chui, now an architectural practitioner in New York City. That cost would be still lower if a large number of the homes were built at once according to Chui .

“The house Chee built has good ventilation and good light,” says Professor Yung Ho Chang, Architectural Design at MIT. "The idea of the 1K house is very much about how could we, as architects in research institutions like MIT, work on world poverty", said Professor Chang.  The new design studio also aims to create homes that could be built inexpensively following natural disasters, such as the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan in March.