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Depending upon the person I talk with in the local café, the United States is rapidly approaching third-world status, or at least grinding the middle class into rubble. I usually don’t launch my ideas up with everyone else’s fear balloons, but when it comes to affording a comfortable life on our shores, I’m having fresh doubts. No wonder I like the idea of downsizing my plans to meet life’s terms and, with them, my own concepts of comfort.

Imagine my delight this week in stumbling across an article on BSB Design, a Midwest American firm that is pioneering pre-fab homes that can be assembled by four persons in a single day using a screwdriver. According to Trendmaster, the 10’x12’ home is built on model of the Catenary Arch. It sells for around $1,500 and has made a difference in South Africa in elevating living conditions among the poor.

The architecture of hope

Photo by Architecture Week

It’s named the Abod (pronounced “abode”), and this BSB dwelling is shipped in a single box. The arch shape allows for a second-floor sleeping loft and is built from non-combustible materials. Abod Shelters created the designs is response to United Nations’ predictions that 2 billion more people worldwide will be pushed into slums in the next 30 years.

Abod’s unique, winning design

Photo by Abod

In 2008, The American Institute of Architects awarded the Abod its Small Project Award for small dwellings. Read the details at Architecture Week.

Starting with basics

Photo by Trend Hunter

Doug Sharp is Chairman of the Board of Iowa’s BSB Design and brainchild and founder of Abod. The initial installation project was completed in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Additional projects on the drawing board are planned in Venezuela and for the creation of the first AIDS orphanage in South Africa.

What this country needs is more big-hearted people who can think small.

I read the Yahoo report on the world’s skinniest house with a smile on my face. It wasn’t because the new skinny architecture is green and almost insanely tiny. It’s that skinny houses – green designs or otherwise – are anything but new. In the United States, there are Greenwich Village townhouses from the 19^th Century that are skinnier than 10 feet wide. And in Europe, you’ll find skinny architecture galore, with narrow row-houses squeezed so tightly between neighbors that they look as if they’re part of the larger home.

Neo-skinny architecture

Photo by Yahoo

First, the home reported by Yahoo. Jakub Szczęsny of Warsaw has designed and constructed a home that is four-feet wide at the thickest end, narrowing to 28 inches. Originally among designs for an art installation, Szczęsny’s Keret House is likely the skinniest house in Poland, and perhaps the world.

Here’s what it looks like installed:

Photo by Arch Daily

Small enough for you? The astronauts may have more room in the space station privy. Read more about the Keret House at Arch Daily.

A narrow escape

Photo by Winkworth

The British property services firm Winkworth has sold this skinny house in Shepard’s Bush, a suburb west of London. A converted hat shop, the house is but five-and-a-half feet wide. There are soak tubs wider than that. But the home rises to five levels, providing 1,000 square-feet of living space. Read more about it at Winkworth.

The mother-lode of skinny

Photo by Two Feathers

Here in Brazil’s Madre de Deus, Helenita has fashioned a 3 x 9 foot, three-story home and wedged her way in. Actually, it’s pretty spacious. See interior photos as part of the skinny-home roundup at Web Urbanist.

(Bye for now: that’s all I could squeeze into the blog this week.)