Blog

Water­Pod

Jul 10, 2009 5:20 pm

The Water­pod demon­strates future path­ways for nomadic, mobile shel­ters and water-based com­mu­ni­ties, docked and roaming.

It embod­ies self-suf­fi­cien­cy and resource­ful­ness, learn­ing and curios­i­ty, human expres­sion and cre­ative explo­ration. It intends to pre­pare, inform, and pro­vide an alter­na­tive to cur­rent and future liv­ing spaces.

In prepa­ra­tion for our com­ing world with an increase in pop­u­la­tion, a decrease in usable land, and a greater flux in envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, peo­ple will need to rely close­ly on imme­di­ate com­mu­ni­ties and look for alter­na­tive liv­ing mod­els; the Water­pod is about coop­er­a­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, aug­men­ta­tion, and metamorphosis.

As a mal­leable and autonomous space, the Water­pod is built on a mod­el com­prised of mul­ti­ple col­lab­o­ra­tions. The Water­pod func­tions as a sin­gu­lar unit with the pos­si­bil­i­ty to expand into ever-evolv­ing water com­mu­ni­ties; an arch­i­pel­a­gos that has the abil­i­ty to mutate with the tides.

The Water­pod is mobile and nomadic, and as an appli­ca­tion for the future it can his­tori­cize the notionof the per­ma­nent struc­ture, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly serv­ing as com­po­si­tion, trans­porta­tion, island, and res­i­dence. Based on move­ment, the Water­pod struc­ture is adapt­able, flex­i­ble, self-suf­fi­cient, and relo­cat­able, respon­sive to its imme­di­ate and shift­ing environment.

As with art, archi­tec­ture is large­ly about sto­ries: sto­ries of its inhab­i­tants, its com­mu­ni­ty, its mak­ers and their reflec­tions on the past or expec­ta­tions of the future. The Water­pod is an exten­sion of body, of home, and of com­mu­ni­ty, its only per­ma­nence being change, flow, and mul­ti­plic­i­ty. It con­nects riv­er to vis­i­tor, glob­al to local, nature to city, and his­toric to futur­is­tic ecologies.

With this project, we hope to encour­age inno­va­tion as we visu­al­ize the future fifty to one hun­dred years from now.