12 year old makes shelter for the homeless with plastic, wire and packing peanuts
27
Feb 2009
Max Wallack, a 12 year old from Natick, have just won WGBH’s Design Squad “Trash to Treasure” design contest with his “Home Dome” invention, which is a shelter for the homeless, built with just plastic, wire and packing peanuts. The structure is in the form of a Mongolian yurt and includes a built-in bed.
For his winning design, Max won $10,000, a Dell laptop and a trip to Boston to see how his design becomes real. The “Home Dome” was selected as the winner innovation out of more than 1,000 contest submissions.
Seen at The Design Blog. Watch a video about the winner, after the break.
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10 comments »
Respect!!!
Thats not a geodesic dome, thats a truncated icosahedron. Carbon 60, the allotrope of carbon was just named after buckminster fuller because it had visual siminarities with the geodesic dome when in fact he was more about dividing up platonic solids and raising key points up to the sphere with was around them.
Still got to be said, incredible idea, and for a 12 year old. Love the construction method aswell very elegant.
Cool! Congratulations!
just great
good example of “go for it”…
Fantastic design, his imagination is very contemporary. This quality is hard to reproduce by adult designer…
first sorry for my english ^-^
Not Bad for 12 years, but…
1.Measurements between shellparts – not good to keep warm.
2.What about waterproof?
3.What about wind that blow out this Home Dome?
4.Entrance – non-functional
Let’s not kid ourselves. That is not a home. The homeless need so much more than fancy tents.
Does it pack away in some ingenious way? does it take into account the daily needs and habits of the homeless? his age is wonderful and everything, but it seems like it’s distracting everyone from the fact that it may not fully address the needs of the individuals who may stand to benefit. Good work, good effort, don’t stop evolving the idea!
Superb example of KIS (Keep It Simple) design.
Congrats!