core elements - nomadic ecovillage - n55 as a starting point ?

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Thank you Eric

excerpted from your message :

" There's several basic elements of the neo-nomadic village I think we need to focus some design work on; the personal micro-cabin, the community lounge, the cooking/cafe pod, the hydroponic system, the factory/fabrication pod, and the energy/power pod. There are many more possible elements, of course, but these are the core elements. "

Yes, good starting points for modelling, prototyping, ...

I'll copy it to http://sharewiki.org/en/Spime_Housing

I visited a fablab the other day, followed a short cnc training.

I remember the mobile micro-factory from this presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDAnBFxFWN8

I also remember a guy who has been building his bike, boat, kayak, ... and been living on them. I try to find the link.

Yes, which elements from n55 could be built on at first ? - if this can be a lower threshold approach ?  Or other available designs with modularity and interoperability ?

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/Manuals.html

I remember their nomadic futures - perhaps they still have some social networks around that project ? ( bcc: Sam, in case he followed up on nomadic futures back then ? )

http://nomadicfutures.n55.dk/

I also notice

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS.html

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I feel inspired moving on to " minimum inventory/maximum diversity systems. "

http://books.google.fi/books/about/Structure_in_Nature_Is_a_Strategy_for_De.html?id=sfc2OEuE8oQC&redir_esc=y

Structure in Nature Is a Strategy for Design

The author writes that "Systems can be envisaged which consist of some minimum inventory of component types which can be alternatively combined to yield a great diversity of efficient structural form. We call these minimum inventory/maximum diversity systems.

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Further brainstorming :

Before even moving on to the pods,

I'm thinking about nomad-gear.  Basically, like camping, but more adapted to the urban nomad.  Much lighter then the pods.  

With the gear, I imagine a lone nomad ending up in some environment,

and like McGyver, set up a pod in a place using the open manuals from collaborative design via his mobile phone, with available materials .  Ideally mainstream materials.

I also like to imagine that even the gear would be made of basic components, that can be re-assembled and re-purposed in different ways, as to reduce weight and materials vs functionality.

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I guess all kinds of parallels can be made, with boats, submarines, ... etc

I am sometimes tempted to think of the pods like a the core elements of a space station, but that realize it is a very different thing - as we can make use of our ecosystems ( urban, natural, etc )

Hence contrary to a space station, we do not need to bring everything with us ... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

I am also tempted to think of the gear as the survival space suit ... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Life_Support_System

but then, realize that, again, much can be found around us, and it can be traded out for access to information about surrounding context, and how to bring resources together and create / transform them for purpose

more links gathered over the years

https://www.diigo.com/user/dante-gabryell/alternativelifestyles

https://www.diigo.com/user/dante-gabryell/alternativelifestyle

https://www.diigo.com/user/dante-gabryell/nomadiclifestyle

https://www.diigo.com/user/dante-gabryell/nomadism

https://www.diigo.com/user/dante-gabryell/nomad

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 5:32 AM, Eric Hunting <erich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for the late reply.

Do you have a specific site in mind? We've been thinking of things that could host the sort of pod furnitecture described in the slide presentation. So we've sort of leaned toward urban venues akin to empty warehouses and office buildings. But as I showed in the presentation, there are other kinds of country venues that could also be used, such as some large park pavilions or demountable skybreak structures created for the purpose. (in fact, one of my inspirations for that idea was the early design work of Constant Nieuwenhuys who was once commissioned to create a kind of sheltered center for seasonal gypsy encampments. This set him on the path to the notion of perpetually changeable architecture. I've never found pictures of it, though. Not much of his recorded history is in English)

There's several basic elements of the neo-nomadic village I think we need to focus some design work on; the personal micro-cabin, the community lounge, the cooking/cafe pod, the hydroponic system, the factory/fabrication pod, and the energy/power pod. There are many more possible elements, of course, but these are the core elements.

My basic model for the cabin pod has been the wheeled box concept, but I'm not totally wedded to that. I think there are other possibilities too. For the community lounge I've been toying with the idea of a combination of stackable plastic shipping pallets and something akin to Thai-style (morn kwan) cushions. These might be combined with some type of media pod element. I've also been intrigued by the idea of spirt fireplaces as a symbolic tribal hearth. ZipGrow seems a likely basis for an easily mobile hydroponics/aquaponics system. We have an open engineering question on the creation of LED or heliostat and fiber-optic lighting to compliment this system and other community uses. At present fiber optic lighting remains stymied by few manufacturers clinging to proprietary hardware. I'm often amazed at how many businesses dealing in things that very obviously depend on interoperability for market share base their naive business models on a presumption of monopoly…

I think we need to start trying to illustrate this imagined village in some way better than the collection of found images I used in the slide presentation.


Eric Hunting
erich...@gmail.com