12-year-old Makes Homeless Shelter from Trash
Well, this is a bit of fresh air, especially with tween news like Baby-Faced Boy Alfie Patten Is Dad At 13.
12-year-old Max Wallack stole the show at Design Squad’s Trash to Treasure contest with his “Home Dome.” The contest asked kids to repurpose trash into practical inventions.
- » See also: The Cool Hunter’s Treelife 2010 to be a Global Show of Modern Prefab Tree Houses
- » Get Green Building Elements by RSS or sign up by email.
I wonder if the Home Dome gets an honorable LEED Certification?
The dome provides shelter for the homeless and is made from plastic, wire, packing peanuts, and flargstin. Pretty much, trash.
The trash-plex looks like a Mongolian yurt, and let Max walk away with $10,000 and a Dell laptop. He also got a trip to Boston out of it. But Max had this to say, “I don’t really care about the money. I care about helping people.”
- Interested in Solar? Sign up for the Nation’s most effective community solar purchasing program.
- Also see this morning’s post by San Francisco’s Mayor on wave energy coming to the coast of California.
This isn’t his first big win. “When I was six,” Max said, “I won an invention contest that included a trip to Chicago. While there, I saw homeless people living on streets, and beneath highways and underpasses. I felt very sorry for these people, and ever since then, felt that my goal and obligation was to find a way to help them. My invention improves the living conditions for homeless people, refugees, or disaster victims by giving them easy-to-assemble shelter.”
Go Max! We all look forward to your future inventions.
Source and Photo: thedesignblog.org
Joe Smith why don’t you worry about your own weight. Ignorant jerk…
I think this young man is so very smart and creative. He also has compassion. I read a critism that it was dangerous. Well maybe the one who wrote that comment could work with this young man instead of being negative and help find an alternative. Has the reader who critized Max created something better? I doubt it. You are one in a million Max.
[...] 26, 2009 Today i am going to write about a 12-year-old Makes Homeless Shelter from Trash , a 12-year-old Max Wallack stole the show at Design Squad’s Trash to Treasure contest [...]
Kameron C Cayce II , don’t be IGNORANT! Have you actually been to “much of the world”? Try going somewhere like India. I’ve been there. You will see people living in much more “dangerous” living conditions than these, which are still much better than being homeless. There are a lot of people in places like India, living in shelters that would never compare to our stupid Western housing codes.
Have you ever been homeless?
Perhaps if you were to actually be forced to live in the conditions that homeless people live in, you might have a different perspective on them being allowed to have a home.
Those codes that are there to “protect” people do more harm than good, causing people who would otherwise have a place to live, to be stuck out in the cold, or, if they do have a low income job, forces them to spend almost all their money on rent, leaving them with inadequate income to pay for food, electricity and any other basic needs.
Not everyone who are homeless are that way because they “are lazy” or because they “do drugs” or “abuse alcohol.”
For a lot of homeless people, the “chance” of their home catching fire and them burning to death is a reasonable risk, considering that the alternative is freezing to death. By the way, you would have the same type circumstances if you were in a tent and it caught fire. Does that mean we should outlaw tents?
Do you have any idea what would happen if your house caught fire? Yes, your house, no matter how “up to code” it is, is still very vulnerable to fire. And let me tell you (from experiance) when your house catches fire, it gets extremely hot. The fiberglass that insulates your walls will actually melt, causing TOXIC fumes much more deadly than melting plastics.
Not to mention the plastics that are in most carpets and any number of houshold items. The fact of the matter is that any home is vulnerable to fire and it is devastating no matter what your home is made of.
SHAME ON YOU for opening your mouth and spouting your ignorant opinion! I’d rather listen to you flatulate.
I live on my Navajo Indian Reservation. In my grandparents days, they lived in a Yurts type building of logs and sand packing to make it weather proof. I have always wanted to make a yurts type dwelling to as a nostalgic reminder.
Thanks
AND joe when have you done something
When I built my current house (10 years ago) I had it designed and situated to take advantage of the sun and shade to my best benefit. Sun on the south side in the morning lights up the kitchen and dining area as well as both upstairs bathrooms. French doors open to the patio where the sun shines in the morning. In the late afternoon, the back yard patio is shaded and cooler than the front of the house.
When I was laying out the house design and choosing the lot for the right orientation, my realtor said it was the first time she had ever seen anyone plan out a house like this. To me, it just seemed like common sense.
I worked for the national park service (matience dept) I personally saw tons and tons of packing peanuts disgarded from shipping docks. I also was privy to styrafoam boxes that large salmon were shipped in to local resturants. I salvaged salmon boxes and built walls for my 10′x10′ tool shed I covered the boxes with lathers mesh and then with a coat of stucco. fifteen years later and the walls still stand strong.
You call that journalism? You can’t write to save your life! I hope they didn’t pay you for that crap!
Oh shutup Kameron…ppl like u are the ones bringing this world to hell