Could These Concrete Tubes Work As A Backyard Home Office?
On TreeHugger we’ve already seen minimalist hotels made out of giant sections of concrete tubing. But who would have known concrete tubing could be actually made to look inviting, much less for travellers looking to stay in one of Mexico’s more popular destinations? Located less than an hour away from Mexico City, Tepoztlan’s Tubohotel is an affordable hotel that uses recycled concrete tubing for its rooms, a strategy employed by designers T3arc to build a hotel quickly and cheaply, without sacrificing the area’s spectacular views.
According to ArchDaily, this hotel was inspired in part by architect Andreas Strauss’ 2005 Das ParkHotel. However, Tubohotel’s concrete modules add a touch of glass and comfort to allow guests a better panoramic view of the local mountain range, Sierra del Tepozteco. Legend has it that Tepoztlan is the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, Mexico’s ancient feathered serpent god.
Of course, producing concrete creates a colossal ecological footprint, but recycling concrete makes it much more eco-friendly as a building material.
The modules are mostly arranged in stacked pyramids of three tubes to free up the wooded site, the top room of each pyramid is accessible via a set of stairs. Inside, it’s a queen size bed, with curtains providing some privacy.
Construction took only 3 months, with the hotel operating as of 2010. Targeting budget travellers, accommodations are affordable (500 pesos or $43 USD per night) and according to Tubohotel’s website, there are two bathroom houses, private showers and toilets on-site and local cuisine with a celebrity chef nearby as well.
By Kimberley Mok
This story appears in partnership with treehugger, a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information
This new use of this idea is done very nicely. It looks like a fun place to stay. And reading this article today inspired an interesting idea.
Many readers here may be familiar with the Snail Shell system of N55;
http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS.html
Lesser known is an experiment done some years ago by Australian Antarctic researchers in adapting rotomolded HDPE tanks into polar shelters by adding a door and a formed-in layer of PE foam;
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/living-and-working/field-operations/tents-shelters-and-huts/larger-shelters/tank-huts
The Snail Shell was pretty cool but a bit too small for anything but a fun experiment. It lacked any insulation and the tiny manway was difficult for most people. Still this picture (http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSSquintus.jpg) was worth that whole project.
The tank huts were much larger and much more sophisticated and insulated well enough to withstand Antarctica. But, while much easier than a lot of shelters used there, they were still rather unwieldy without some lifting equipment and a little too hermetic, leading to condensation and ventilation issues.
Suppose you rotomolded a tube with integral insulation as the tank huts used but more like these hotel cabins in form, with integral mounts for bed/floor decks and other fixtures inside, a recess to mount door/window frames of wood or aluminum like the Mexican hotel cabins, and on the outside some wheel ridges and recesses for plastic chock-blocks and tie-downs. I’d make them a little bit longer than the 8′ or 2.5m long hotel cabins to provide a larger front standing space -maybe 3m.
In a relief context, these would be pretty versatile. You would be able to pack a tough quick-deployed highly insulated, extremely weather-resistant shelter into a rolling and stackable package made of mostly recycled materials using a simple mass production fabrication process. You could install integral LED lighting and shelving and pack flex cell solar power, supplies, and other deployable gear in the open volume and under the bed deck. With both ends framed, you get cross-flow ventilation with openable screens and windows and quick mounting of heat pumps or mini-stoves.
They would be very easy to transport because they are lighter and smaller than ISO containers, could float, be dropped by air (maybe even parachute), and could be dragged by people or trucks using a rick-shaw-like frame (remember the draggable water containers?), and could be deployed in side-by-side stacks. The design could also incorporate accordion fold laminate paper shades on the ends and arch, dome, or cone shaped shade roof units to group clusters or rows. The tubes could also be specially made for certain uses, like toilets, showers, dry storage or water storage tanks, kiosks, kitchens, and centralized power/communications units. For instance, turning a unit vertical, adding a portal, and partitioning the upper 1/3 of the height would make a nice simple solar shower, the upper section serving as a tank with a heat absorbing lid. Or a larger public shower installation could use a stack of three units, with the upper unit as water tank and the two lower ones as walk-through shower rooms with shower hear rows along the top. After the initial emergency situation, these structures could be endlessly re-purposed or recycled whole to make other products locally.
In the non-relief context, I think these would also make for economical vacation cabins suited to winter climates, homeless shelters, capsule hotels at airports, worker housing, storage and work sheds, guest rooms, garden pavilions, yoga huts, farm animal shelters, kids play-houses (personal space capsule?), kiosks, giant composters, marina float modules, and telecom vaults. While the basic shelters would use the tubular profile to let them roll for transportability, the profile need not be round for other applications. For instance, it could have a box, hex, octagon, flat bottomed circle, or even the classic pitched roof house profile and these could be made in short stackable self-sealing sections for custom lengths and easier handling. So the production capability could be justified by these many non-relief applications.