Unbreakable house and Bernard Fredette, the Architect

Bernard Fredette, a french-canadian 74-years-old retired architect, living in an earthquake-proof house of his own unique design.

This is not one of my usual blog entries, as it is not about my travels, but rather who I met while travelling. And my first attempt at interviewing someone.

I met this guy in a resort a few kilometers away from Puerto Plata. He was living on the territory of the resort in a house he built on top of the hill, overlooking the surrounding vistas of forests and mountains.

He has more than 50 years of experience as an architect, but besides working, he used to travel a lot, including sailing across the seas. In the age of 65 he retired and now 6 months a year he spends in the Dominican Republic and half back home, in Canada.

While in DR he lives in a house of peculiar appearance, which he initially designed to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti in 2011. The construction allows to build it fast and cheap, providing people with emergency shelters as well as more permanent habitations. It can house 10+ people if done right.
It is also naturally resistant to earthquakes, because of the shape of the frame it's built upon.

^{It is kinda hard to see the structure because of the crossbeams and inner tetrahedrons}

The underlying shape of the frame is a combination of a square pyramid and tetrahedrons (triangular pyramids) which are inherently rigid (can't fold, provided the material is rigid as well), unlike a cube or a parallelepiped.
In other words, no matter how much you shake it, it will not collapse.

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The house he lives in has been built 6 years ago from wood, steel and plywood. It has a kitchen, a bathroom, lodgings on the second floor and a movable stair to climb there.

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If it's so awesome, why it is not widely used? Well, according to him he couldn't find investors to produce a prototype and test it in the lab, even though he built 6 houses since 2011.

^{Collecting rainwater for bathroom}

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^{The view from his window}

Outside of the house he built a shelter from sun/rain with comfortable chairs and even electricity. It offers this commanding view:

And a picture of the place during sunset:

I put the exact location of this house to steemitworldmap.com so in case you want to see it for yourself and have a conversation with this extraordinary man, you know where to go.
I hope you liked this post, any feedback in the comments is appreciated. Stay tuned, stay loco!

To be continued...

Previous post: Green paradise in the National Botanical Garden in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Check out my travel blog:
Dominican Republic: 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
Turkey: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
Iran: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20