Look out hipster Dumpster dwellers, there's a new microhome connoisseur in town and Professor Dumpster has got the credentials to blot your meager garbage can home out of the adaptive reuse scene. Featured recently over at Co.Exist, Prof. Dumpster (real name: Jeff Wilson), an environmental scientist over at Huston Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, plans to live in a souped up garbage can for a year, outfitting the 33-square-foot space with essentials like a shower, toilet, kitchen, and Wi-Fi. Over the course of the year, the professor—a youngish guy with a goofy smile and thick-framed glasses—aims to "engage the next generation in creative thinking about the important topics of sustainability and science education," citing the likes of Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ms. Frizzle as influences.
Per Co.Exist, Wilson came up with the idea while working on a paper in Starbucks: "I looked out the window into the parking lot and saw an eight-yard dumpster and had some sort of strange flash that I was definitely moving into a dumpster." A year later he sold his belongings—each item was $1—and began living (clandestinely) in his office at the university. After seven months of that he bought and cleaned a used bin that, at 33-square-feet, measures just 1 percent the size of 2011's average new-built American home.
For the first phrase of the project, Wilson will be what he calls "Dumpster camping," living in an empty shell, curled in a sleeping bag on the floor. Then he and his students will outfit the whole shebang in the types of modern conveniences that sap resources in regular homes: air conditioning, regular-bulb lighting, Xbox, and the like. It's all to establish a baseline for the final phase: an environmental impact makeover that brings in things like "energy-producing" toilets and nano-insulation to maintain temperature. (Yeah, OK, "pimped out" was the phrase Wilson used.) The plan is to travel around performing for kids in grades K through 12, even going into "stealth mode" and "dropping it on a kids' playground and seeing what happens ... Because they're going to open the door and see an Xbox, a bed, a shower, all these things." More info, right this way.
· 'Professor Dumpster' Is Moving Into A Garbage Can, And Bringing His Students With Him
· The Dumpster Project [official site]
· This tiny NYC abode is literally a Dumpster with a stove. [Curbed National]
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