🧵🪡 Thread on A New Approach to Building:

🏠 The way most people build homes or houses as an asset class is backwards and fundamentally limiting to human potential.

I've built 3 houses, but it was only after the 3rd that I realized the sequence was wrong. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Related: #JengaOcha #MjengoHub @PodCityKe @UjenziBora 2/ A Serious Human Should Begin with Production Houses.

What do I mean by production houses?

There are two types of houses:

a) Production Houses: These are structures designed primarily to generate resources, income, or provide long-term sustainability. They focus on enabling productivity and self-sufficiency.

b) Consumption Houses: These are structures designed primarily for living and consumption. They focus on comfort, amenities, and accommodating daily life needs without necessarily generating resources or income. They are also used to multiply other consumers.

How to plan 5 Acres for self-sufficiency.

1/10 🏡 On a 5-acre plot, you could potentially support a family of ten, with surplus to sell!

Let’s look at a potential allocation & its yield. Here’s how we’d divide the land:

✍🏿🪔

#FreedomWork
#SketchItBuildIt
#FarmLife… https://t.co/IaUvUAjoTJtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
2/10 🏠 1 acre would be for the house, farm buildings, a kitchen garden, and an orchard. We could yield various vegetables, fruits, and some honey 🍯 from this plot.

Jon Jendai has a very interesting experiment on Maximizing the Utility of Small Farms 🥕🥦🍆🥗… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

In Kenya, Family Law and how it is practiced to disenfranchise men is more dangerous than the Finance Bill.

You can subdue a Nation by weakening the Strong.

I can show you a thousand ways to raise 5% of everyone’s productivity but I cannot show you how to turn boys who are… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… We need to disband Family Law as currently practiced in order to build a more healthier society 50 years from now.

There is no use in educating boys who will in their turn, when they marry, become treated like their fathers.

Or girls, who in their turn, when married, will… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

ON HOUSING FUND:

Overcoming Housing Challenges: Creative Solutions for Affordable Housing

1/10 Expensive creative talent in the building industry is a challenge for housing affordability.

But instead of seeing it as a negative, let’s encourage innovation and collaboration… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2/10 Leading pundits often focus on other aspects, neglecting housing affordability.

As you have heard, the loudest are running around in cat and mouse games with investors.

Bwana, can Loud Experts also stop scamming innocent Kenyans?

Can we mobilize and engage these… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Today I am glad I helped 2 friends dodge a bullet.

In short, we will redesign a house they had to a reasonable size.

Initially,the Master Bedroom was 10 metres long. If you are not careful, you can be made to carry burdens you cannot afford for 15 years straight

#MjengoMaths Look. You don't need a 350 square metres house as your First Build.

Even 250 Square Metres is too generous.

What else can you do with extra Kes. 5 million?

1. Use a house as a ladder to your Financial Goals.
2. Solve for what you need.

You don't prove anything by stressing.

How to retire effectively with your friends on 1 to 5 Acres and do what you wish.

Or.

A Survival and Wealth Creation Thread.

Or.

How to reduce the tension between You and Your Landlady if you have two trustworthy friends. 😂

1/n.

#SketchItBuildIt
#FreedomWork
@UjenziBora Early last year when I realized land was very cheap in Rural Kenya,

I did this tiny sketch at the back of a book I was reading 📚.

This is based on 1 acre. About 105m long by 42m.

The 3 eighth plots at the bottom are the living quarters and 1 to 6 are commercial.

#GoRural

At 27 Square Metres, this house is 7.4 times smaller in footprint than the size of a typical house of a middle class family in Kenya

Can be built in 1 week

The size of the family has significantly reduced, but we are still building bigger houses

Q. Is it time to #ThinkSmall?

https://twitter.com/Arquine/status/1520855645037240321

Once you lock down the Spirit of a Place, the size doesn't matter.

Can you enjoy borrowed views?
Are all bodily functions met?
Does every user have a space to be themselves? (Bed, Shower, Sit)

The rest is fashion and politics.

#GeniusLoci
✍🏿🏗 Necessity first. Luxury next

When you take a set of say 6 rules you respect and internalise.

You suddenly become very aware when you violate the boundaries. This idea is dangerous because authorship can be erased without consequence.

The rules just need to give you a clear relatable model of understanding the world.

Soon, they become second nature.

How to Build a Comfortable Big House Slowly starting with Kes. 1m and a piece of land.

This comes from lessons learnt over the last 15 years and building my own house.

Or

"How to proceed from Necessity to Luxury."

1/n

#SketchItBuildIt
#Consult
#DesignBuild
#BuildSlowly Step 01. Vision.

Building is Sacrifice. Be driven by a Vision that is greater than a pile of stones

This can be to create a home for your children (we fight harder when fighting for others)

This can be to cut off that annoying Landlady. You run faster when running from Poverty

How to reduce the Cost of a Typical Maisonette by 40% through Design Thinking.

A Short Thread. 🧵
1/7

#SketchItBuildIt
#Bungalow vs. #Maisonette
#DesignBuild
#PracticeNotes
#Costing

ub.co.ke Rationale:

The most common reasons people build Maisonettes are

1. To have less footprint on the ground.
2. To afford family members a common room upstairs
3. To fit the hype of a neighbourhood.
4. The aesthetic of Maisonettes is attractive.
5. To enjoy better views beyond.

Revisited: How to Build A 3 Bedroom House Slowly using the 52 Week Challenge.

This article is good but has one fatal flaw.

I will try to explain it in my new understanding of #TheGoodLife

✍🏿📐🏡🕯
ub.co.ke/index.php/2021… The beginning point of all to-build decisions should be, "Why?"

Not how many rooms.

Because the most important part of the house is the person and their spirit which inhabits and reflects on the material world (Interiors, Allocation of space, Function and Size of spaces etc)
/2

Small parks everywhere.

If you buy land amongst say 150 people, you can turn yours into a park and charge a small fee to maintain it.

If everyone is building, go the other direction... ✔💯🏘

In future, green spaces will be premium for events, recreation and bench press.😂 Notes.✍🏿

People need green open places to go; when they are close they use them.

But if the greens are more than three minutes away, the distance overwhelms the need.

- Christopher Alexander.

#GreenSpaces
#PublicSpaces
#Parks

🏡Design houses with accessible greens***✔🔨

Once you define what the good life is for you, every day will bring new chances to live it.

And if a day is blank, tomorrow will be another day.

Include things that don't need money
-Sunshine
-Laughter
-A potted plant
-Sketching
-Writing
-A walk
-A dance

Life is for the alive Lack of this awareness of the simple things that make a good life becomes a predicament when one wants to do a big spend.

It is best to define it when times are dire and hope is little.

That is the moment for Visioning. And if you can know that one thing viscerally. That's it

Thief + Stategy = Strategic Thief.

How will we insulate bottom-up economics from the anarchy of self-interests?

I am honestly unable to resolve this dilemma within the limits of, "society gets what it deserves." If we were in a former state of nature, i would understand the mechanism of having a strategic thief.

Uganda and the neighbours would simply weep and wail.

But these are Known Thieves. And I am speechless because I equally don't know where angels sleep.

Q. If you started a wheelbarrow making factory your village, how many obstacles will stop you?

That is the Conversation.

Ease of Doing Business.

Not ease of Picking and Pushing Wheelbarrows. Every small business owner knows how hard it is to breathe in this economy.

Remove the bottlenecks.

When I observe how these people talk, hug and smile.

And observe how you can be stabbed for trying to elevate a brother next door.

I keep very quiet. There is a certain insidious crab mentality amongst the poor.

It was as if the loaf of life has so few slices, and you should starve that they may eat.

Yet, at the top, they talk bakeries.

3 Things:

1. It would be nice if Young Architects spent a month on a wheelchair as part of their training.

2. Road Engineers should be forbidden to drive for a month. They need to walk or Cycle to Work

3. Ministry of Roads/ @KeNHAKenya should own Tree Transplanting Equipment. What English does one use to justify to NEMA the cutting down of 70+ year old trees?

The generation that destroys the environment, often does not pay the price. (Hon. Wangari Maathai)