The Cubex

What is it ?

An hexagonal house that only has right angles, is self-supporting, dead easy to build, (very) low-cost and resists strong winds.

• Boards, fabric, or any flat material that can be made into a square.
• Right-angle hardware like metal brackets, aluminum profiles or (wooden) beams
• Screws, nails, dowels or glue
• Needle and thread if sewing
• Common tools like screwdriver or hammer, a saw if you need to cut wooden beams.

Wait, hexagons don't have right angles ?

Correct. There's a trick, though : it's an hexagonal floorplan, but a cubic volume. So it's both a cube and an hexagon, hence the name : cube + hexagon = cubhex, shortened to cubex for easier spelling.

So it's self-supporting ?

Yes. Each face leans on the two others. I tried with 3 tiles but I can't seem to locate the photo to show you :)

How easy is dead easy ?

It's basically three sides of a cube, a "half cube" so to speak. All you have to do is assemble together three squares at right angles. In the worst-case scenario, the only needed tool is a screwdriver. And a lot of elbow grease, so if you can afford an electric screwdriver, you'll save yourself quite a lot of sweat.

How cheap is it ?

I don't have exact figures, it depends a lot on which materials you can get. I’d build it with Triply, A.K.A. OSB3. This is a structural, fireproof, mold-proof, watertight, insulating and cheap material. It comes in dimensions up to 5*2.5 metres, so with 6 such panels, you can build an approximately 43 square meters house. Oh, and did I mention there are no cuts ? So there's no leftover material.

Resists strong winds ?

Well, honestly, I guess. It's all flat surfaces and right angles, no lift-generating curves. I'd direct an angle towards main wind direction.

Wait, there are no walls ?

Right. You can either use no walls, build walls with whatever available material -rammed earth, adobe, corded wood, papercrete- or use additional panels to make walls. They'll be right angle triangles with 'hex side' and 'entrance height' as side lengths. See Python code below.

Oh, and of course, as the floorplan is a regular hexagon, it's tilable, in a honeycomb fashion. Just be careful, though, if you want to build three contiguous cubexes, you'll get a huge water-tank inbetween the roofs. Great if it's your goal, not so great otherwise ; you'll have to design a way to get rid of rainwater. I'd favor a house with a central patio and an impluvium.

I have no space to build a real size one, so I hope you people will try this and give feedback ; I hope I'll get feedback such as '[enter event name] destroyed our house so we built a cubex for only [insert ridiculously low amount of local currency] and now we have at least a roof to shelter'.

I know a hexagonal house is not as convenient as a 'cubic' one, but I'm sure that the cubexes' low cost, quick setup and easy building qualities will offset the inconveniences ; so if you know any non-profit that could use the design, please share with them.

Python code

I used my humble Python coding skills and my even humbler math skills to code the program below. It's results seem to be accurate, with cardboard models, at least. You input your material's longest side measurement (i.e. the squares' sides length), and after a blink, it outputs floor surface area, maximum 'entrance' height, hexagon's side length, and apex height. The apex is the highest point of a pyramid, so as the cubex looks like a weird pyramid, I found this name to be relevant.

I made this quick render to illustrate a dew harvester idea, but you can think of tilable umbrellas, expandable water tanks systems, greenhouses, tents or egg boxes, as a circle would be tangeant with three faces.

Well, I didn't find any reference so far. When mirrored top-bottom, the cubex turns into a crystal-like volume having 6 square faces and 6 triangle faces. I did find the 'skew hexagon' which can be seen as an outline of the non-connected edges of the cubex ; but as far as I know, there are no cubex building yet. The closest thing I could discover is the honeybees' honeycombs ending in a three lozenge-faced polyhedron ; squares in the cubex are a special case of the lozenge, so lozenges are probably an optimum in terms of material use, but squares are way easier.