Why Is This Quirky House By Swedish Architect Tommy Carlsson Called The Happy Cheap House When Sadly It Seems So Expensive...

It's quirky, it could be fun but why this house
by the well known Swedish architect Tommy Carlsson is called a happy cheap house is not apparent. Sadly to me the prefabricated minimalist, corrugated clad house that looks like a cube after some major cosmetic surgery, seems so expensive.
But it does have some wonderfully practical and simple design features.
Like the water collection gutters, the small ventilation openings and the main entrance with its clever all-weather covering.
And plywood and corrugated iron are very good construction materials.
The house has been developed as a prototype for the low cost and space efficient prefabricated house market that is seen in Sweden.
But the costs seem expensive at E170,000 for a 110 sq metre house.
In the US, allowing for currency variations, the house would be around $180,000 and in New Zealand's currency it might be around $360,000.
I've been wrong before and once I was mistaken.
Perhaps it is a happy cheap house after all... 

The Tiny African Fishing Community On Lake Victoria's Migingo Island...

The tiny island of Migingo on Africa's Lake Victoria is roughly the size of half a football field but the tiny jumble of rock is home to about one hundred and thirty people.
Nearly the whole community is involved with fishing and trading the rich stock of River Nile and when they're not fishing or crammed into  their corrugated iron and wood huts, they're enjoying the five bars, a beauty salon, several hotels and numerous brothels that the island boasts. Why they live in such cramped conditions is strange as there's a wonderfully lush green and virtually uninhabited island less than two hundred metres away but perhaps it's the entertainment that keeps them on their funny little island. Or staying close to the mother lode.
There's more about the little community here.
Because the River Nile catch is worth a lot of money both Uganda and Nigeria are often involved in hostile disputes as to who owns the island and it's valuable resources.
Greed is everywhere...

Have You Ever Heard Of A Dog-Trot House...

I'd heard of a dog-house and have been there often, but a dog-trot house?
Evidently, a dog-trot house, also called a breezeway, a dog-run or a possum-trot house was a style of house common throughout the south eastern United States in the late
nineteenth century.
It consisted of two cabins connected by a passageway under a common roof. One cabin would have been used for cooking and eating, the other for living and sleeping.
This little modernist dog-trot house in Ramseur, North Carolina, is a reincarnation of the Zachary House designed by architect Stephen Atkinson some years ago.
The cladding is corrugated iron or 'wrinkly tin' as the two owners, Terri Moffitt and Aushalom Caspi, both psychology professors at Duke University, like to call it. The same as they saw used extensively in New Zealand when they were conducting research in this country.
The interior of this little house is very minimalistic and beautiful and by no means a dog-house...