Stone house

This is what a perfect world would look like.

A house made out of stone, with air flow built in. Like Stonehenge.

An energy machine that can make energy anywhere and never break.

A community food machine that can pump out cookies or something from ingredients.

A water machine in every home that condenses water from the air, with a faucet attached.

A mode of conveyance that uses infinite energy tech, to fly anywhere.

New house design for 2009

My current most well thought out simplest house is a cave house. I've come to this conclusion for the following reasons:

1. We can! We are the only species on earth capable of making their own cave out of rock.
2. Our planet has been around for a long time, and that naturally gives our planet lots of mountain ranges that have formed over eons, so lots of places to make cave houses.
3. High supply, and low demand means mountainous terrain is CHEAP!
   
4. There is no need for air conditioning, AT ALL, EVER AGAIN, even if it's solid state and never needs repair, or energy to run.
5. Once you build it, this house will be there for eternity. Site: Cave paintings.
6. We have the tools necessary like homemade explosive charges and electric blast cord, and hammer and chisel and jackhammer, and generators to power it, and pick axe, and some rocks are easy to chisel out.
7. The only fire possible is from the contents of the house.
8. It's weather proof other than water leaking from fissures(just use silicone).
   
9. There is constant wind power right outside the door, because along the sides of cliffs and buildings there is a natural chimney effect(Bernoulli's principle) as air flows across the top of a cliff or building, air will travel up the sides from the bottom.
10. You'll have the biggest house around(mountain sized).
    

My last house design was "New technology in a futuristic cabin".

Phone, Internet, and TV: "wireless broadband mobile internet". If you can get cellphone reception where you are. Also see my free cable post. And have a Google android for house phone, if it can connect to the wifi of the mobile internet, and a go phone for emergencies.
Food: Be on a south facing part of the mountain, and grow food nearby, or collect from the forest. and have a road to a nearby town also.
Dishes: Make pottery from self separated clay, which you get from the way you make adobe, and fire them in a self made oven/kiln. Making adobe: First you dig a hole, then you fill it with water, then you fill the hole back in with dirt, and then mix it up. What you will end up with once the hole dries up in 1 day, is clay that has settled at the top and sand that has settled at the bottom of the hole. Now you just skim the clay off of the top, and mix it with sand in the proper portions to make adobe. This is useful for a structural and heat retentive component of a house. You can also include hay mixed in with it, acting as a binding material so it won't crack, for structural adobe. Adobe is also useful when making a rocket stove.
Lighting, Cooking, Heating, Fridge, Transportation: All electric and solid state.
Toilet, Shower,Clothes washing: Toilet is the outdoors (bury it for no smell, also test a post hole digger). Shower the same way as Alaskans, a rag and bucket of soapy water. Bucket of soapy water and plunger for clothes.
Electric: Wind power enough to fill the batteries. Or just solar power.
Income: A home business of some kind like as seen in my home business post, so that you won't have to commute to work.
Road access: Build your own dirt gravel road out of the chips left over from excavation.
Excavating: Use a pick axe for soft rock and osmocote and chemical fertilizer for hard rock. Video

This would be one of the most fun houses ever also because first of all you'd be living like the Flintstones and it would be just like when you used to build forts as a kid however precarious they were. Start out with just a cave and whenever you feel you're lacking anything, just add a new amenity to make yourself more comfortable, with all the spare time you have from not working 8 hours a day to pay a mortgage.

Instant Roof

I just posted this on whynot.net

Have a factory that produces a solid sheet of 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick plastic that is 20 foot wide and cut at intervals to be a length of about 50 feet or whatever. But the general idea is that you roll up the finished product to transport it to a building site and then at the building site you just unroll it and put it on top of the house, as well as attach it in whatever way works best. This roof will last forever because it's plastic and may not blow away in the wind if it's thick and heavy plastic. It could be an arched roof or an A shaped roof. An arched roof may just be easier because it's the natural shape left over from being rolled up. Also for natural lighting just cut out a hole of any shape in the roof, and put a frosted translucent plastic window over that hole, for easy energy savings during the day.
The plastic to make the roof sheet out of could be recycled and any color. In the same way that they make imitation wood planks out of recycled plastic. Also this kind of roof would be a good insulator already because it is made of plastic, but an alternative may be to make it out of rubber. And you could always just spray foam the underside of the roof.