Stephen Cairns creates 'expandable home' for Indonesia's fast-growing cities - Design News

In Nongsa, Indonesia, Stephen Cairns and his Urban-Rural Systems team developed the expandable house ("rumah tambah" in Indonesian, or "rubah" for short) as one of the sustainable urban design concepts in response to the challenges of rapidly developing cities like Batam in the Riau Archipelago, Indonesia. It used to be a collection of small fishing villages with a population of only a few thousand people, but in less than 40 years Batam has become a cosmopolitan city of over a million people. Thanks to a new free trade agreement and proximity to Singapore, the city's accelerated growth, combined with internal migration, has led to Batam becoming the fastest growing city in the world in 2015.The design of the expandable house focuses on the problem of housing and allows for flexibility in its configuration to match the changing patterns of residents' consumption and resource expenditure. The rubah architecture is based on an understanding of flexible, unequal and unsustainable metabolism, patterns of income generation and expenditure, water, energy and food consumption, and waste production.

The rubah robot house is a dwelling and source of income capable of handling waste, water and energy locally. The design of the expandable house is based on six principles:1. Implementation: The expandable house is designed as a set of technologies, material strategies and planning guidelines that can evolve according to local social, cultural, and economic conditions.