I’m eagerly awaiting “Sleeping under 5 bridges in 5 months”.
Probably bigger on the inside…
I’ll take Things White Guys Can Do With Little Regard for Their Safety for $300, Alex.
I didn’t know David Blaine was a professor.
Having both the middle class income to decorate and equip the space as well as legal permission/police immunity to remain permanently including sleeping and stashing some stuff makes this a fun experiment about minimalism but far removed from the homeless experience.
You should check out the website for the project. It wasn’t about the experience of being homeless. It was about experimenting with reducing environmental impact and consumerism.
I think those are great ideas, and I would love to do them.
Just as long as it doesn’t involve my wife suggesting I getting rid of some of my books or old artwork.
I’ll bet that “dumpster” did not smell like a dumpster.
It’s a real stretch to say he “lived” in it, though. Not only was it lacking a shower and toilet, there was no food preparation space, etc. So all he actually did was just sleep in it, using numerous spaces within the university for the majority of his day-to-day activities, relied on others to cook for him, etc. Which makes talk of sustainability and the comparison to the average American home meaningless - get back to us when the dumpster is an actual living space that doesn’t require all sorts of external resources.
He seems actually to have been experimenting with the Soviet system in which people lived in small flats but had access to large public spaces, ate in their factory restaurants etc.
For a lot of the world this would be a more sustainable system that reproducing complete living facilities which are greatly under-utilised, and commuting expensively to a separate work location.
Our society actually makes it difficult to live this way (except for students at some of the better universities). If we did, the GNP of society would be quite a bit lower. But would our actual standard of living suffer?
this bro is still saying single, tho
Aka the “dormitory” system. Working at a university, I wonder where he got that idea…
I have been thinking about how much space I actually need to live in. I am married so there is that to take into consideration, but if I was single, I figure I wouldn’t need much space. As long as I had access to a kitchen, a bathroom and a place to sleep, I wouldn’t need that much space. Maybe a studio apartment would work…
I have to disagree there. The availability of those amenities is exactly what makes this more interesting than most “tiny home” projects. Those claim to be a radical form of environmentalism but are almost exclusively found in exurban landscapes which require a car for mobility. Same old shit, now in a smaller, cuter package! The dumpster experience at least models a truly alternative form of living, using communal infrastructure in a walkable, urban landscape.
He’s at a university - he’s basically just moved the dorm room out into the parking lot (being a teacher, he also has an office, so he can spend even less time in his “living” space). Except it’s really poorly designed and built, so it requires an air conditioner to avoid killing the inhabitant during warm weather. “Same old shit, now in a smaller, cuter package” seems to describe this pretty neatly.
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