Instant home for the instantly homeless

The BiniShelter looks like a giant house from a pop-up book or origami project.  It can be made from a variety of materials--from alley junk to natural debris--and locks together in half an hour with help from a lifting robot. Instead of flooding, it floats. Bini's website even shows off Mediterannean, California, or Sierra (right, sideways) styles for the discriminating disaster victim. Namesake and maker Dante Bini offers the design free to any nonprofits that might use it.

Earlier this year, Carbongeek had “a hard time believing that materials that are not prefabricated can be built to automagically interlock and build a structurally safe house.” See for yourself next Tuesday when Bini talks for free at Fort Mason’s Museo ItaloAmericano in San Francisco (Oct. 11). SF Chronicle has more. As Dwell magazine founder Karrie Jacobs writes in Salon, "suddenly it seems more than fortuitous that so many up-and-coming architects in this country are newly passionate about low-cost housing."