Stationary Houses Are So Ten Minutes Ago

Nivair H. Gabriel — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:00:00 PST

Looks like Baba Yaga and Wizard Howl were onto something. According to Danish artists Ion Sørvin and Øivind Alexander Slaatto and MIT student Samuel Kronick, walking houses are the ultimate living spaces of the future. The team of three designed a solar-powered, six-legged abode with a living room, bed, toilet, kitchen, and wood stove — and this week, the ambulant invention took its first tour around Cambridgeshire, England.

Sørvin, Slaatto and Kronick hope that their high-tech mobile home will one day be affordable for the average person. To that end, they've assembled a manual of their project; so with the right tools, the right upholstery, and the right programming algorithms, this hexagonal spider-dwelling could be yours.

Kronick, who designed the inverse kinematics software that controls the six-legged house, has high hopes for the design:

Kronick says he would love to test the walking house in Africa with a herd of elephants, and has ideas about an amphibious version that can float on water as well as walk on land.

"We plan to make the house walk well and reliably enough that you could program a set of GPS waypoints via the onboard computer, remotely from an iPhone or over the internet through a Google Maps interface or similar, and have the house follow that path," he says.

Sounds convenient, but going over to a friend's house for dinner will now involve a whole new level of complexity. Whose dinner table should you set? How do you stop the kids from running back to their own house to play video games in the middle of the evening? At the end of the night, when you decide it's too late to start a long housewalk elsewhere, will your new neighbors hear you through the window as you deconstruct the evening? And God help us all if you accidentally hit the wrong GPS bookmark and show up at your parents' house instead.

A House That Walks [via Popular Science], Manual for micro dwellings [N55]

Floating Chinatown Also Future Home To Olympic Kegger

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:30:00 PDT

Meet the new Chinatown. Gone are the streets cluttered with cheesy restaurants and unauthentic looks — hello, floating star city. The Superstar city (from the minds of MAD) is a work of conceptual architecture that remedies the old "Chinatown" stereotype. Calling the old look a "kitsch image of contemporary China," the designers propose this radical shock therapy to fix the look. Not only will this floating city include restaurants, streets, spas and homes, but museums and cultural experiences as well. Plus the designers want it to float to each future Olympic host city to educate the masses and host festivities.

In the new Chinatown, tourists and locals can come and tour museums, sample the food and learn more about Chinese heritage, without having to deal with the cliched look that prevails throughout most large city Chinatown districts.

The Star can come and go across the face of the world, landing anywhere and extending its streets to the public. Also, it's self-sustaining and will grow its own food and recycle all of its waste. And one more thing: the star will be the traveling party town for the Olympic Games, landing at each host city and setting up hotels, spas resorts and one big star-party.

The Superstar City is a part of The Uneternal City exhibit which collects and displays futuristic concept art from the brightest minds in the industry.The show debuts in Arsenale, Italy from the 14th of September to 23rd of November 2008.

[MAD]

io9: mad design

Stationary Houses Are So Ten Minutes Ago

Floating Chinatown Also Future Home To Olympic Kegger