Cheap Housing? Beijing Man Builds Egg Home

Environmentalists might just approve of this cheap housing, a mobile egg-shaped home covered in bamboo and grass seed-filled burlap sacks. But will it catch on as a real living space?

Dai Haifei, a 24-year-old Beijing architect who developed the egg home, had been living in it on a sidewalk in the high-rent Chinese city for almost two months, until it was ordered removed by city managers who said it didn't conform to housing standards, according to the Beijing Review.
The 6-foot-high, solar-powered home is just big enough for a small bed and a tiny dresser. Pegs hanging on the wall can hold books and articles of clothing. Although there's no kitchen, a water pump system stored under the bed can keep

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water for basic washing for about three days. There doesn't seem to be signs of a toilet, but perhaps a pot works just fine.

"I want to have a home of my own, no need to be too big, as long as it shelters me from the sun and the rain," he said on his blog explaining the egg home. Haifei, has an internship at Standard Architecture, a company that was involved in an "egg of the city" design project about movable small homes for struggling groups of people in the city such as migrant workers, the college students and street vendors.

The home, which is starting to sprout grass, cost $969 in materials to build, and another $538 to transport to his company's compound.

Flickr has a slideshow of 141 pictures showing the construction of the egg structure from beginning to end.