The Walking House 304
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.
blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern art is pointless.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit harsh. Modern art is *mostly* pointless.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit harsh. Modern art is *mostly* pointless.
What's pointless about a house with no running water, no sewage system, and no electricity? I mean, come one, with Wifi and a cellphone what could the residents be missing?
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
These would be great for all those poor villagers in places threatened by tsunamis. They could make them out of locally-sourced materials and run them on wave-generated energy, which they have in abundance.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
What's pointless about a house with no running water, no sewage system, and no electricity? I mean, come one, with Wifi and a cellphone what could the residents be missing?
Also taking into account, that your house can now also walk away from where you just took a dump.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
ARTHUR DENT: Pointless? Is that all it's got to say?! One word! "Pointless"!? What the hell's that supposed to mean?
FORD PREFECT: Well there are a hundred billion houses on the planet and a limited amount of space in wikipedia. And no one knew much about the pod house of course.
ARTHUR DENT: Well I hope you've managed to rectify that a little.
FORD PREFECT: Yes! I transmitted a new entry off to the editor... He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement!
ARTHUR DENT: What does it say now?
FORD PREFECT: "Mostly pointless".
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also it is the price tag of the prototype ($50.000 for a prototype is cheap), they expect the resale price to be a lot lower.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
...that's why I have wheels instead of legs.
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>...that's why I have wheels instead of legs.
Instead of? Hate to break it to you, but if you're posting from the US the odds are over 9 to 1 [census.gov] that your household has at least one set of wheels. I believe the grandparent poster's point was that the legs on this new mobile home can't possibly move fast enough to provide effective means of evacuation (as described in the summary) or to negotiate its way through traffic. Barring your ability to go off-road in a settled environment without crushing everything
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i agree that hte more space you have the more you waste.. personaly i could see my self living in something like this
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=60;t=001461;p=1 [snopes.com]
if only i had a traveling job
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Note to artists.. world != you..
fucking self centred assholes..
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Interesting)
My sailboat - made of FRP, 40 years old, a classic with a sound hull and rig - cost less than $5K to buy, and I will have less than $15K in her when she is completely fixed up, including replacement of all wiring, subsystems, etc... She uses solar and wind, and is just fine living off the grid. For ease of access, though, it costs less than $300/month to stay tied up to a marina dock. Mechanical propulsion, when needed, is provided by a small outboard which consumes only 1/4 gallon/hour at full speed. She is capable and able to go nearly anywhere in the world that there is a water depth of 3.5 feet or more. Floods only give her more places to go. ;)
;)
There are many many hundreds if not thousands of older boats - power and sail - out there which get destroyed or sink due to neglect every year. With some due diligence, anyone can find a very sound vessel to start with, "recycling" in a sense, and living a lifestyle which has a very small 'footprint' of consumables. Why pay $50K for a home as small as a small boat, that can only traverse land (and that, slowly...), and which is absolutely dependent upon the grid?
Of special note is the fact that few marinas will have a true geek/nerd/IT pro in residence. Yet nearly all of them now have office computers, websites, and wireless networks - all things which can benefit from knowledgeable attention. Your skills and knowledge can make the cost of marina living a trivial sum, reducing your "existence tax" even more...
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Informative)
Hard to distill all this for quick posting and easy digestion, but I'll try... Pardon me in advance for any sweeping generalizations; specific knowledge can be gained through further research. :) Anyone with further Q's can feel free to message me.
eBay, Craigslist, your local paper, and inquisitiveness while dock-walking will help you find a good boat for cheap. There are also lots of websites and books about restoring and living with older boats. One website which comes to mind is The Plastic Classic Forum [plasticclassicforum.com], which deals almost exclusively with sailboats. Reading that site will lead you to many others, both forum-style, and personal sites.
DON'T be in a hurry; bide your time and do research while you get to know the market. Time is your friend; an good old boat is *not* getting more expensive... :)
Some quick notes: Basically, the 3 biggest factors determining price will be size, age, and condition. A 4th factor of importance is 'how eager is the seller'.
Unless you already have, or are willing to learn (a LOT), a wooden boat would probably not be your best choice. They are labor intensive and require specialized knowledge, even for maintenance. (They can be great if you have that, though.) Metal boats are similar - floating in electrolyte can take a huge toll on metal. FRP/Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic/fiberglass boats are the easiest to take care of, especially for someone new to boats. For this reason, I will concentrate on these.
Size: Smaller is easier, cheaper, and if you've been around boats/marinas for very long, you may well come to the conclusion that they are easier to use. From personal observation, it seems that the larger a boat is, the less it leaves the dock, as a general rule. 25' LOA (length overall) seems to be about the smallest size that you will commonly see people living on (that's how big my boat is, but I am a huge proponent of the KISS principle). On the upper end, you won't find many people singlehanding boats over, say, 45-50' LOA.
Age: FRP boats built prior to the first oil embargo in the early '70's are in the opinion of many the best FRP boats. Reasoning for that is the quality of resin used by production boat builders dropped when oil prices soared due to the embargo. Also, boats built then tend to be overbuilt, especially compared to today: the material was relatively new, so builders weren't sure how much material to use, and erred on the side of caution. FRP boats from the mid 70's up until the late 80's/early 90's commonly suffer 'blistering' problems (where water penetrates the hull via osmosis) that are expensive and difficult to fix.
Condition: The worse shape a boat is in, the longer its been neglected, the cheaper it will be. Look for something that has not been used in years; you will have to pay out of pocket for new gear, but many times on older boats, if you are smart, you will replace most of the older stuff anyway. :) Often you can find a boat that is basically just a hull (from a usability standpoint) for only a few hundred dollars. Stay away from 'cored' hulls, generally - you want solid fiberglass, because core almost invariably gets wet, rots, and has to be replaced. Cored decks can also be a problem, but are fixable relatively cheaply.
Good luck with your search, let me know how it goes, or if I can be of further help. :)
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but what do you do when you sit in a community of these things and some smartass kid yells "Form mecca Shiva!" and now your house is the upper thigh of a 260 foot tall god of Shaiva hell bent on wanton destruction?
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"When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next."
Yeah, sure, and were are you going to walk? You can't have this on the public roads, it won't fit on a sidewalk, so no way you're going anywhere in this.
It's fun but it doesn't have any pratical use, IMHO.
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Walk onto a waiting 18-wheeler parked in a nearby parking lot.
Drive to a new location and park near where you want the house to be located.
Walk off the truck and to the new location.
I could see this being useful as a command post for emergency services (say in a place with bad roads, or one where wheeled vehicles can't access for some reason.)
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First, found a MUCH better link about the house here [n55.dk]
Technical specifications:
Basic module:
Height: 3.5 meters
Width: 3.5 meters
Length: 3.72 meters
Weight: 1200 kg
Max speed: 60 meters/hour
Component list:
Plating and framework wood and plywood
Legs made of steel and mechanical components
12 linear actuators
solar panels
micro windmills
polycarbonate plates
interior equipment
Height - not bad, but going by pictures goes from pavement to roof - you lose a foot or so before the floor.
Width - definetly counting the legs in, reducing it's usefullness as a measurement of living area.
From the last time I bothered to look inside of a trailorhome/motorhome(mall display, wasn't shopping for them), they're relative basins of luxury, and probably have 3 times the square footage(especially the expanding models) than what this one looks to
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
Modern art is pointless.
Maybe so.
But if you added a huge (solar) panel on the side of it, Star Wars fans would be queuing up for miles to get it.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:4, Funny)
Modern art is pointless? Au contraire, mon ami:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism [wikipedia.org]
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
Get your walking house off my lawn!
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. (Score:5, Funny)
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Modern art is pointless.
Excellent! Yet I would have said 'Pointless is Modern Art!"
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A caravan is only about the size of a big tent, hardly a house or worth the ridiculous price tag.
(And houses are just our days caves anyway.)
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The Picasso in my toilet is good for decoration. So it's not art :)
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Art can be useful. For instance, here's a translated quote from an old russian cartoon:
"Well, what is the picture on the wall good for, for instance?"
"It's a very useful picture -- it covers the hole on the wallpaper!"
Looks.... (Score:5, Funny)
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it'd go well with a Darth Vader suit.
Either that, or a wrench.
Re:Looks.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Nope, this is the first model. It's called the XT-XT walker.
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Just add beer... (Score:5, Funny)
You can either have your house follow you.
Or your house could just not be there when you go home.
In Soviet Russia.. (Score:4, Funny)
Home goes you!
Re:Just add beer... (Score:5, Funny)
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There's that cool new invention (Score:5, Funny)
called "wheel". Very handy for moving things around. Check it out!
Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel' (Score:4, Funny)
And it's not even patented yet!
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And it's not even patented yet!
Wrong. [bbc.co.uk]
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I'll bet the 'artist' who drew this [worldofstock.com] would contest this patent if he hadn't been dead for 1000s of years!
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> Does AAA cover it?
Unlikely, considering that AAA has recently demonstrated their inability to handle even a simple gooseneck trailer.
It's too late. (Score:5, Funny)
You've awakened the house, and it catches you and eats you.
Maybe a dorm room... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe a dorm room... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains?
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours, and these places are usually also very fertile. It also makes us very vulnerable to rising sea-levels.
Re:Maybe a dorm room... (Score:4, Interesting)
We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours
Not that I object to this - Just that New Orleans ended up being far more than just a harbour, so I think the correct response would be to build housing for the area - whether it be on stilts to let tidal wash from hurricanes pass underneath and survive the occasional flood, to having everybody simply live in RVs/Mobile homes and simply pull out for the occasional hurricane, to crazier stuff like building your house on a float pallet or being able to crank it up to keep it above the water line.
Either that or build cheap and simply accept that you'll be buying/building a new house every ten years or so. Or have your insurance pay, and pay the corresponding premiums. Therefore, the only people who can 'afford' to work there are the ones essential to the harbour industry who get correspondingly huge wages.
Housing in the USA today has gotten somewhat crazy. People are buying a LOT more than they need. Personally, I think that, in some circumstances, 'disposable' housing is a perfectly reasonable response. Build it cheap, replace when destroyed.
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That big piece from the Star Wars Lego set is not a house. Despite what you stuff inside of it. Form follows function. This would be a great tool for FEMA. But it's not a house. How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains? There's a bright idea.
You have a point IF you negate the profit from the shipping and agricultural industry. I won't disagree people build in stupid places. I'm sure you can look at your own down and see new construction in areas that we didn't build in before, areas like drainage basins. There, when it floods, well, their own damn fault for building there. But coastal, river, and flood plane communities, well, loosing a house from time to time is pretty trivial when considering the benefits we get from them.
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They should build floating houses
If by 'they', you mean the Dutch, then they already have [csmonitor.com].
Perhaps my favourite bit is that they're floating on concrete, which is an often overlooked/unappreciated building material.
Its a trailer with legs (Score:2)
You can just imagine the high class of people that would want to live in this tin can.
Perhaps its time these "artists" stopped reading comic books reconnected with the real world.
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You can just imagine the high class of people that would want to live in this tin can.
They call themselves "artitsts".
Perhaps its time these "artists" stopped reading comic books reconnected with the real world.
See, you already knew.
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None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.
So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land! Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...
You can put your sexy cool and nerdy pod on m
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That arrangement already exists. They are called trailer parks.
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Yes, but now they're accessable and acceptably fashionable for StarWars nerds ;)
Re:Its a trailer with legs (Score:4, Interesting)
None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.
Despite everything else, this isn't a good usage of limited land*. Consider, a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents four times the floor space in about the same amount of actual land, far more luxury in the sense of having actual water and sewer, air conditioning, etc... Make it 6-10 stories and each apartment can be luxurious, space wise. I doubt you'd be able to stack these 6 high. Worried about flooding? I saw a condo being built that was 6 levels of parking garage and 12 levels of condo.
Humans wanting to live denser calls more for multistory buildings, and I'd like to see more arcology type structures - retail businesses on the bottom, offices in the middle, living quarters on the top, except for maybe a rooftop restaurant. Even that's flexible. Want to put the housing on even floors and the businesses on odd? That'd work too.
So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land!
The idea of the common man having a large house is a very new one in the scheme of things. I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.
Sure, land is limited, especially when you consider we need to grow crops on it still, and want a reasonable commute to work. As I said earlier - I think vertical integration, especially 'mini arcologies' is the answer. If I was a city planner I'd be working on ways to encourage them. Probably through tax breaks if they build at least as much housing into the building as they'd be anticipating working there.
Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.
Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...
As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.
*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.
Slashdot has useful pics instead of weird icons??? (Score:5, Funny)
So... the pic shown in the front summary story is actually relevant?
I don't like it. [shakes fist]
Weeeeheeeee! (Score:2)
And lasers on top...
He might be walking.. (Score:2)
.. but he still needs the cane.
"Paw.... (Score:5, Funny)
...them housey thingumies is up on the back field again."
"Boy, fetch my shotgun."
Oh man (Score:2)
Exotic bloody solids (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, their project has cuboctahedral modules that join onto each other via round portholes that are at about 30 degrees off vertical. I don't know what it is about architects that gives them such contempt for the actual users of their buildings. Everyone else designs to co-operate with the eventual users. Architects design to be clever, where 'clever' means lots of big geometrical shapes that reflect sound and carry vibration and have nowhere to sit down. Metal-walled buildings are pretty grim anyway from a temperature/moisture control/vibration point of view, but making it cuboid, corrugating the surfaces a bit and avoiding welds (in favor of joins that provide some damping) would be a start.
I think the acid test for innovative housing ideas should be: do they have to resort to silly futuristic shapes, or is there a chance they have some actual ideas for creating nice places to live?
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All true, but the idea - as it is so often around here - is to attract attention rather than provide mere functionality. The thing is basically a weirdified RV, but nobody's going to post a story about a motor home to Slashdot, saying "Hey look! You can move it in case of a flood!"
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And yet, hexagonal prisms are stacked more easily than cubes. You only need to lift 1/2h instead of h in order to attach the next one.
And hexes, when space is a constrain, are more efficient for
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the house was fun to own (Score:2)
ambulating whimsically about the countryside
until the day it wandered into an AT-AT retirement farm, during mating season
let me tell you, it's not fun to be in a house on legs being humped by a horny AT-AT
Imperial walker? (Score:2, Insightful)
What Comes Next (Score:2)
The Mobile Outhouse
Property (Score:2)
The RV of the Future (Score:3, Funny)
New Dictionary Entry Needed (Score:3, Funny)
First steps (Score:2)
Walk away from floods? (Score:2)
Dude, where's my house? (Score:2, Funny)
Bayanihan (Score:2)
("Bayanihan" roughly translated means "helping your neighbor." House-moving is the most common depiction.)
just wondering (Score:2)
where does the toilet go to?
Paranoid of foreclosure . . . ? (Score:2)
Walk away from your debt.
Literally.
Seriously, the starving artists must have a secret plan. I'll bet that house will just disappear someday, when nobody's looking.
"Hey where did that darn house run off to?"
Hydraulic? (Score:4, Funny)
I work on 6th Degree of freedom (6 hydraulic legs) flight simulators and there's one thing that all the hydraulic ones have in common. After a few years they start pissing oil all over. No matter how well they are maintained, they always eventually leak. Part of it is the weight they're under, part of it is the seals start to wear.
I wonder how environmentally sound it would be to have a house that sags on one side and pisses hydraulic oil everywhere it goes. Not to mention that the owner would have to maintain the locomotion systems.
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More Information from one of the designers (Score:5, Informative)
First, the Telegraph article is just silly reporting; the whole "runs away from floods" thing is pop media spin. For the original motivations for the project, read this: http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/WALKINGHOUSE/walkinghouse.html [n55.dk]
Second, yeah, it's contemporary art, not a piece of raw engineering or product design. N55 works entirely non-commercially, so the "pricetag" is not very relevant; you won't be able to buy one of these from us, but hopefully we will document things well enough that you can build something similar yourself if you'd like. The tetrahedral legs are of a unique design (as far as I know) that we want to share and the control software/hardware will all be explained and made available online in coming weeks. Art can be nerdy, too.
Third, I know it's slow and small and funny shaped. That's part of the point: to get people questioning the status quo of how we live and what we've been given to live in during recent times. But don't be so dismissive of radically different ideas... I can assure you that hexagonal prisms and truncated octahedrons are far more comfortable shapes than your boring ol' cube any day.
There's also a video on Youtube of it doing it's thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvxIB83Y0PA [youtube.com]
Terrans well on our way to Flying Buildings (Score:4, Funny)
In StarCraft, Terran buildings fly. It's just an ability the Terrans build into all their buildings for free, because they like it. Its good to see that we're progressing towards that ideal, because it will really help us fight off the Zerg.
Forget Starcraft, thnk Star Wars! (Score:3, Funny)
With enough AI, these things will evolve solar panel wings and become Tie Fighters.
MIT, the Mother of the Empire!
You are standing in a open field (Score:3, Funny)
You are standing in a open field, west of a white house.
The house walks away.
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Yes, the number of dollars needed to buy a Euro has gone down recently, to 1.3 last I heard.
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Because the article is written by British press for their default British readership perhaps?
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I think you might be on to something there....
Re:Not coloured impressed just yet (Score:5, Informative)
Howl's Moving Castle (the book) was by London-born Diana Wynne Jones. The film based on the book was a Studio Ghibli production, with screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki.
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Best yet, you can re-configure your house so your dining room is picking up the morning sun for breakfast, and when you get home from work it's letting you watch the sunset as you eat your supper! Go to bed watching the sunset, wake up watching
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Best yet, you can re-configure your house into a giant mecha and join the fight against evil arch-villains
There we go, fixed that for you ;)
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And when you decide to relocate the rooms travel together in a small herd. Interesting image, but you can get you sunrise and sunset views more easily with a simpe rotating house. Or just by eating breakfast in the kitchen and dinner in the dining room.
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imagine a trailer park cluster of these....
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This should not be modded offtopic. Any cluster of said walking homes could qualify as a stampede (running may be a stretch, but still). Please mod to correct.
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heresy: 2 a: dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice b: an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heresy [merriam-webster.com]
And yes, even Slashdot has weakened and now we see images in articles. Soon there will be mp3 soundbites (most probably ogg vorbis or flac just to be difficult) and a social network where we can all get to know one another. Wouldn't that be fun?
I'm feeling a little woozy... I thin
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Guess Mussorgsky must have passed him by in his youth, 'cause he sure missed a trick there (even the ELP version would have done - I'm no snob!) :)
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And as Ensign Chekov would point out " Was first thought up by Russians!"