Tornado Can't Destroy This Home!

Too often we expect Mother Nature to respect the homes that we have built, when in reality we should be respecting Mother Nature and building our homes around her capabilities instead. We can’t force people to stop building homes along beaches where hurricanes or erosion could destroy them, nor can we expect people whose whole livelihoods are in Oklahoma and Kansas to just pack up and leave everything in the chance that a tornado might hit there. So the solution may be to build homes that can evade Mother Nature’s cruelest abilities. One company is doing just that.

Ten Design Company in Hong Kong has created a prototype home modeled off of the survival mentality of a turtle. The home is constructed of  simple hydraulic levers which push the home in and out of the ground, when the home’s outer shell detects high velocity winds associated with thunderstorms and especially tornadoes. For decades people have been building their homes up, either on stilts or columns in the hopes that water and/or air would flow underneath them, not affecting the main structure of the home. The problem with this is that people often forget the flying debris that may be associated with that tornado, or the surge that could be associated with that tropical system. Both of those elements are great examples of how going under ground, could be the best option.

The home is not tornado-proof per-say, but rather tornado-evading, since it is instead dodging the weather rather than trying to go against it. The homes are built with a series of solar cells and layers of Kevlar to be able to allow the home maximum natural light, while also keeping it safe from the day-to-day elements. They are also looking into putting carbon nanotubes on the shell of the home to absorb some pollution turning it directly into fuel for the home to power the hydraulics, but this would be something that would likely not have on the initial homes to keep costs down.

As soon as warning sirerns would go off, the sensors on the home would activate, and entire neighborhoods of these homes can be collapsed in mere seconds. After the home has been lowered into the ground, a water tight seal on the roof is locked, making the structure water and wind proof.

10 is currently developing a prototype with a group of ship builders in the US and Africa. The company’s hope is to get a prototype built in the mid-western U.S. to be able to test it in real-life weather scenarios. They would like to take that prototype house to a state fair somewhere in the mid-west to be able to show what it can do, to the people that would likely fit the company’s intended audience.

 

Source:  10 Design Company