As housing continues to be a basic human need, it's essential to address the challenges that come with it. Traditional housing methods have become outdated and vulnerable to natural disasters, leaving many people without access to basic needs like energy, water, food, and waste disposal. The LightForm is a new type of housing that aims to address these issues by combining modern technology with traditional methods. It's a complete redesign of the old way of thinking about basic needs and creates an integrated ecosystem that allows you to unplug from the wall and have access to these basic needs anywhere.
You don’t drive a horse and cart to get around or use a corded phone to make calls.
While these things still have romantic qualities, they are not practical solutions for our modern, everyday world. Science, technology, and engineering have made significant progress in the last generation alone. It is time we apply these new technologies to our housing as well. By combining traditional methods with modern technology, we can create housing that is not only more useful in our current world but can also be ready to adapt as things continue to change, especially with increasing danger from natural disasters.
Let’s quickly look at one example, our energy system. Our energy comes from a grid, which means that one branching line connects multiple buildings to a central location. There is only one place you can get energy from, which is that central location. Most people don’t store any power in their home. If something breaks on that line, you just don’t have power. And this power system was designed around the same time Edison designed the lightbulb (as an aside, the lightbulb has had multiple updates since then). On top of that, if you live in the U.S., the infrastructure itself isn’t updated unless something really fails, so most of it is old and falling apart. Power outages are increasingly frequent due to disasters taking out failure points or extreme temperatures causing people to heat or cool their homes more, resulting in more load on the system and insufficient energy supply. In 2020, Americans suffered 1.33 billion outage hours, which frequently occur during extreme events when the lack of temperature control can be life-threatening if you cannot heat or cool your home in extreme temperatures. However, this system's vulnerability is not only limited to power. Water, food, and even safe waste disposal depend on a delicate system with several major breaking points. Even housing itself is unstable due to unstable housing markets and disasters destroying homes.
We believe that everyone deserves access to these basic needs, no matter what. The LightForm addresses these problems by being a complete, first-principles redesign on the old way of thinking about these basic needs. Basically, it is the electric car to a horse and cart. Same goal, different way of achieving it. There are similarities between an electric car and a horse and cart of course, like the wheel; no reason to reinvent something that worked so well. But we have updated the wheel to include a tire, which has greatly benefited the vehicle. The key to this updated way of thinking is to think of housing and all it provides (being the endpoint for basic needs) as an integrated ecosystem. Kind of how a smartphone integrated what a corded phone does with extra features like lightbulbs, calculators, new ways of communicating, the internet, and more. And similar to this smartphone, the LightForm allows you to unplug from the wall and have access to these features anywhere.
Let's take a look at this using our earlier example: energy. The LightForm both generates and stores energy, which is enough to create energy independence. However, we need to take this thought experiment one step further because the LightForm can plug into other LightForms, Hub Houses or even the grid. This creates a nodal system. So if somehow all of the myriad of energy production systems on the LightForm aren’t producing energy, you can easily get energy from your neighbors near or far. One point of failure doesn’t cause a whole system failure. This nodal system not only benefits its own residents, but also those who remain connected to the grid. By storing energy during off-peak hours and selling it back to the grid during peak hours, the nodal system creates a backup to the grid and increases the availability of energy during high demand periods. This, in turn, can make energy cheaper for all. It's worth noting that governments sometimes pay renewable energy companies to shut off energy generation during off-peak hours to prevent the grid from becoming overwhelmed. However, with the LightForm's nodal system, excess energy can be stored and used when needed, eliminating the need to pay to stop generating energy. The same principle can be applied to other basic needs systems as well.
It's clear that housing is in need of a major upgrade.
Not only are our current systems for delivering basic needs outdated, but many housing options are also filled with toxic chemicals, lack durability, and fail to provide protection against disasters.
Moreover, they often require expensive remodeling to be made accessible, meaning that if you break a leg or start to age, your home cannot easily adapt to your changing needs.
Many proposed solutions to this problem (such as tiny houses) don't consider health, using materials like plywood that contains formaldehyde, a highly toxic chemical that becomes even more dangerous in small spaces, or toxic insulation such as fiberglass or spray foam. Livability aspects such as storage solutions are often ignored, and there is typically no consideration for end-of-life planning. Additionally, the materials used are not always sourced according to strict guidelines.
Unfortunately, many proposed solutions can be downright dangerous since they haven't undergone rigorous safety testing standards or considered fire suppression. For instance, RVs, trailers, and mobile homes were never intended to be permanent housing solutions.
We found that many off-grid options advertised did not produce enough energy for practical use. In fact, many claims wouldn't hold up in actual off-grid scenarios.
Therefore, we took it upon ourselves to design something that integrates our knowledge and aims to create a healthier, safer, and more accessible home that meets basic needs. While we recognize that nothing is perfect, we will always strive to improve and seek out experts who can elevate the design and point out flaws.
In addition to being an upgrade on standard and even alternative housing, the LightForm is adaptable to changing trends, which is key to why we designed it. It is not your imagination - there are more disasters impacting the world today than there were a decade ago. In the last 5 years, the U.S. has had an average of only 18 days between billion dollar disasters. Without exaggeration, the situation is dire with a fluctuating ⅓ to ½ of the country in somewhat permanent drought, wildfires, heat waves, freezes, and severe storms battering the east. A reported 78% of Americans have been impacted by extreme weather.
How prepared is our housing for extreme events? A survey done by CoreLogic found that 1 in every 3 American houses is at severe risk of a climate disaster. The surveyor went on to suggest that every single house in America is likely at exposure risk. In 2021, 1 in 10 homes (15 million homes) were affected by a disaster, costing homeowners $56.92 billion in property damage. This has put increasing strain on insurance companies, who are unprepared. Insurance premiums for most Americans went up 12% last year alone, with some areas, especially in wildfire zones, unable to get insurance or being dropped mid coverage due to the high risk. Flood insurance has gone from an average of $700-800 to $4,000 to $5000 , which is roughly 600%. Buildings like 5-over-1's (apartment buildings) are made of the cheapest materials, cannot withstand earthquakes, are dangerous in a fire, and, as we've seen recently in New York, can be lethal in a flood. Additionally, they generally don't have a plan for end of life or for protecting them against climate change as we've seen in Florida. This also impacts the economy, as 2/3rds of global investment is in real estate.
After years of searching for disaster-resistant homes, it became clear that all available options were either too expensive, impractical for everyday use, could not provide adequate protection in a major disaster, or required evacuation without most of one's belongings or access to basic needs. This, plus the fact that insurance premiums are skyrocketing and some areas are being completely dropped from insurance coverage, made us feel as though the time was now to design something to address these problems. Additionally, disaster response efforts are contributing to increased emissions and toxic chemical dumps. The LightForm, on the other hand, is designed to respond to smaller disasters and be easy to evacuate in larger disasters. It also regenerates areas, making a positive contribution towards a safer future.
LIGHTFORM, KIONNALI, LightForm sunflower logo and Kionnali sunflower logo are filed trademarks of Kionnali Living Systems LTD, application nos. UK00004045437, UK00004045434, UK00004045431, UK0004045426. The exterior impression of the LightForm home is protected by UK Registered Design Nos. 6345930, 6345931, 6345932, 6345933. All original images and text copyright Kionnali Living Systems LTD, 2024, all rights reserved.