Design Mobile
Design Mobile รจ un gruppo di architetti americani che focalizza la ricerca nella sperimentazione di architetture temporanee e mobili. In questa occasione vengono presentati tre progetti: Mobile Ecolab, Portable House+Ecoville, Hydra House (progetto realizzato su invito del magazine Wallpaper)
Mobile ECO LAB
Completion Date: June 1998
Owner: Hollywood Beautification Team, Sharyn Romano, Director
The mobile ECO LAB was built in collaboration with the Hollywood Beautification Team, a grassroots group founded with the mission to restore beauty and integrity to the Hollywood community. Verbal and visual exchanges took place using computer animated drawings, traditional architectural drafting, and large scale modeling techniques. Full-scale work was performed with a defined material palette (specifically that of a donated cargo trailer and cast-offs from film sets). The 8 x 35 foot trailer now travels throughout Los Angeles County to inform K-12 school-aged children about the importance of saving and protecting our planet.
As a working mobile classroom, the ECO LAB provides a base for a range of exhibitions all of which focus on ecology. A multimedia program explaining the “life of a tree” creates a path for discovery that weaves in and out of the expandable ECO LAB. A working art studio, local artists collaborate with the children to create facade-sized murals replacing graffiti at inner-city schools. School teachers use stage-like platforms to discuss each child’s role in the importance of planting trees and maintaining a sustainable environment.
Like a circus tent, this mobile icon arrives at the schoolyard where elevated walkways fold down and slide out of the trailer’s body. It is immediately recognizable as a place for interaction, discovery and fun.
Project Credit List
Principal: Jennifer Siegal
Project Team: Ausencio Ariza, Larry Cheung, Thomas Cohen, Tinifuloa Grey, Chayanon Jomvinya, Jody Segraves. Assistants: Alex Arias, Guillermo Delgadillo, Han Hoang, Maurice Ghattas, Thao Nguyen, Jose Olmos, James Popp, Phung Thong, Juan Uehara
HYDRA HOUSE
Completion Date: January 2003
Client: Wallpaper Magazine Invited Proposal
hy.dra: n. Any of several small freshwater polyps of the genus Hyrda and the related genera, having naked cylindrical body and an oral opening surrounded by tentacles.
Hy.dra: n. The many headed serpent that was slain by Hercules.
hy.dranth: n. A feeding zooid in a hydroid colony, having an oral opening surrounded by tentacles. (hydr(a) + Gk. anthos, flower.)
The Hydra House is a mass-customized mobile modular structure that is responsive to environmental issues of global warming and water desalination and recycling.
The structural stalks are separated into chassis (providing internal structure, power, communication, mechanical, and a self-sufficient energy collecting system), and mass-customized elements (for interior build-outs, exterior and interior skins, electronics, and communications). Component design, engineering, and integration are at the system level. This allows architects to concentrate primarily on the unique programmatic and environmental context of the building, and allows individual occupants to focus on tailoring their environment according to needs and values. In doing so, the additional cost, risk, and coordination errors associated with a “one-off” or mass-customized structure are avoided.
Structures, embedded with intelligence:
1. Water: rain water with stretched bladder and desalination (97% of the planet’s water is salt water in the seas and oceans) and treated waste water. Each tube either pulls sea water upward (see bottom skin punctures drawing directly from the ocean) or distributes desalinized water downward to provide potable and washing water.
2. Power: photovoltaics, salt crystalization, and thermocouple energy conductors
3. Communication + Mechanical: global knowledge and plumbing
Pneumatic Exterior Skin: 2 layers of inflated neoprene
Liquefied Connections: suction-like tentacles attach to each independent housing unit, forming colonies and allowing for external passage.
Floating Garden: each independent housing unit has an attached self-sufficient floating garden. These Lily pads stem from Hydra House’s structural stalks, using an umbilical cord to provide fresh water and nutrients gives life and feeds the floating garden.
Project Credit List
Principal: Jennifer Siegal
Senior Design Associate: Kelly Bair.Assistant: Sara Schuster, Peter Klein.
PORTABLE HOUSE + ECO-VILLE
Completion Date: under construction
Clients: Dr. Lance Stone + Tom Ellison respectively
Harkening back to original prehistoric models of shelter and dwelling, the Portable House adapts, relocates and reorients itself to accommodate an ever-changing environment. It offers an eco-sensitive and economical alternative to the increasingly expensive permanent structures that constitute most of today’s housing options. At the same time, the Portable House calls into question preconceived notions of the trailer home and trailer park, creating an entirely new option for those with disposable income but insufficient resources for entering the conventional housing market.
The Portable House’s expandable/contractible spaces, the varying degrees of translucency of its materials, and its very portability render it uniquely flexible and adaptable. Its central kitchen/bath core divides and separates the sleeping space/s from the eating/living space in a compact assemblage of form and function. When additional space is required, the living room structure can be extended outward to increase square footage. By design, the House can be maneuvered and reoriented to take advantage of natural light and airflow.
As an entity unto itself, the Portable House adapts to or creates new social dynamics wherever it goes. For example, when individually owned units are grouped together, they can create common spaces for social interactions, such as vegetable gardens, micro-climates within courtyards, aromatic side yards, etc. Or multiple units can be arranged by one owner to create separate but adjacent spaces for living, working, and leisure.
As a mass-customized development, the units are stacked and shifted. The bottom unit provides a flexible work space, and the attached upper unit offers an open well-lit living space with access to a private roof garden.
The Portable House’s versatility, the way it moves across and rests lightly upon the landscape, provides a provocative counterpoint to the status quo housing model. It recalls a time when the elements that constituted shelter were easily manipulated to accommodate innumerable variables and conditions. It likewise offers flexibility in the socio-dynamics of everyday living. Whether momentarily located in the open landscape,
briefly situated in an urban space, or positioned for a more lengthy stay, the Portable House accommodates a wide range of economic needs and simple functions.
Project Credit List
Principal: Jennifer Siegal
Design Team: Kelly Bair, Elmer Barco, Thao Nguyen, Jon Racek, Sara Schuster, Andrew Todd, Peter Klein.
