A playful solution to the housing crisis | Sarah Murray

52,842 views ・ 2018-05-30

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Translator: Ivana Korom Reviewer: Camille Martínez
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Hi.
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My name's Sarah,
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and I've been priced out of the housing market.
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In fact,
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I'm one of the majority of my generation
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who can't afford a home.
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And in 2017, home ownership amongst young Australians
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has fallen to the lowest level in recorded history.
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So, foolishly or otherwise,
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I decided to build my own home.
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But the prognosis wasn't good there, either.
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Architects cater for the one percent,
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builders are scarce,
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so service is inconsistent and prices are high.
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The single biggest investment in my life,
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and I was amazed how little self-determination,
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choice
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and, ultimately, control I had.
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What's more, I was doubly surprised at how vulnerable this made me feel.
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Frankly, I felt trapped.
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So, I reflected on this for quite some time.
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And I realized
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what I wanted was democratized design and construction.
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And that led to me asking one very simple question:
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What is building a house?
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What is it?
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Well, it turns out that building a house
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is making a series of decisions, some with physical consequences,
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within a defined set of parameters.
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Now, having worked in software applications for some time now,
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this all sounded very familiar to me.
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I also couldn't understand why we build on-site.
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No other major assembly in our lives is constructed like this.
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Your car doesn't come to you in pieces
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with an extra 10 percent just in case,
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to be assembled at the mercy of the elements.
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So why should your house?
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So I built a computer game.
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A game that allows you to design your home
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and have it delivered to you.
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A game that puts the home builder
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back at the center of the largest purchase in their life,
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elevating them from spectator to player.
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A game with full visibility of the costs and environmental impact
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of each new attribute you add.
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Using modular components, players select items from their library
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and drag them into their world.
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Each item, be it a wall, a solar battery or even an armchair,
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contains all of the information for the system to calculate costs,
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environmental impact
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and even a happiness tally for the player.
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Eighty-three percent of home builders said that next to cost,
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environmentally friendly features were the most important things to them.
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So out of the gate, homes are integrated with solar systems.
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Born green.
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Sustainable housing is often associated with wealth and affluence,
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but that shouldn't be the case.
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In fact, truly sustainable housing should be available to everyone
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and affordable for all.
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So, I had found a way to get the control back that I was craving
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and give it to others.
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But something was still bugging me,
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something was still keeping me up at night.
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What about those people
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who have genuinely no control over where they live?
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Every hour -- in the space of your intermission --
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4,000 new homes are needed in the world.
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Wrap your head around that number.
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That's an astonishing 35 million homes globally, every year.
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And in Australia alone,
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we have a shortfall of 250,000 dwellings.
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And in addition to that,
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we have 190,000 families on the assisted-housing wait list;
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families in need of a home.
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Between now and 2050,
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when the global population is set to move from today's 7.6 billion
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to tomorrow's 9.8 billion people,
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hundreds of millions of people
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will experience security, health and safety issues.
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Imagine if you can not feeling secure in your home --
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not from crime, not from theft,
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but from the fact that the building you're in --
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the building you're in --
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might not be structurally sound
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or built from nontoxic components
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or meet local natural disaster standards.
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It's the 21st century.
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And this just isn't good enough.
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What if -- what if --
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we could restore control and dignity to those individuals
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by giving them a home, but not just any home:
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their home,
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and a home of their design.
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We're currently adapting our game so that when a player builds a home,
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they're contributing to a home for someone in need.
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And I know this sounds like a lofty goal,
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and it is ridiculously ambitious,
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but today, our current operating model
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operates at a ten-to-one ratio.
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So for every 10 homes we build,
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we can build a home for someone in need.
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(Applause)
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This is made possible because today,
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with design for manufacture and assembly,
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which uses light gauge steel frame construction,
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shipped and assembled on-site,
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we can decrease construction costs by 20 percent
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and environmental waste by 15 percent,
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saving time, money
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and keeping tons of waste out of landfills.
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The power in modular construction
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is that you can build year-round with confidence in your costs,
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in your quality,
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and in your delivery date, in your build date.
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Now, wouldn't that be crazy? Wouldn't that be great?
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But --
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that doesn't get me to my goal.
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My goal is one-for-one.
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So I've been traveling the world,
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looking at different alternatives of construction 3-D printing,
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trying to find technology that will help me deliver on my ambition.
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3-D printing is so exciting and so promising,
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offering a 40 percent reduction in cost and near zero waste.
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And this is just to name a few,
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but some of the really exciting innovations happening all over the world
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are happening in Italy, France, Dubai and Australia.
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And they use robotic arms to print everything from solid stone
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to concrete, to wax.
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In Italy, they have developed a technique using sorel cement.
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Sorel cement was originally invented in 1867,
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and it's the beautiful chemical marriage of magnesium oxide and local sand,
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which they can now use to print solid stone walls.
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And in France,
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they have a regulator-approved although still experimental process
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where they print two parallel tracks of foam insulation
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and pour concrete in the middle to create solid stone.
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And in Dubai, sitting at the foot of those two glorious Emirates Towers,
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is a vision of the future in the middle of the desert.
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They've got their experimental office of the future,
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which is constructed using 3-D printed concrete
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which was printed in China
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and shipped and assembled on location in Dubai.
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And not to be outdone,
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in Australia, we've pioneered an amazing technology
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that allows you to print wax molds
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and pour concrete over the top of them,
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allowing you to create really intricately beautiful and cost-effective facades
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that you can see in person
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the next time you travel the London Underground.
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But all of these things are tools --
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hammer of tomorrow, if you like.
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And the one common thread that connects all these things
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is computer-aided design.
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We will need models to build using these techniques,
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models like the ones being developed by players in our game.
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I want to put every person that wants one
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in a home of their own design.
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And there are many more applications still.
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We could usher in an entirely new empowered experience
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of special needs or aged-care accommodation.
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And we could provide rapid, on-site assistance
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in emergency housing situations.
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In the words of one of my players,
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"I want to take matters into my own hands
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and live by example."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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