Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Walking House

Posted by samzenpus on from the baba-yaga-eat-your-heart-out dept.

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.

12 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by The_reformant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Its only about the same size as the back of a transit van. Hardly a house or worth the ridiculous price tag. Caravans etc beat this hands down in every way.

    Modern art is pointless.

    --
    I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
    1. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's a bit harsh. Modern art is *mostly* pointless.

    2. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by bloodninja · · Score: 4, 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?

      --
      Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
      Return one hour later.
      Who's happy to see you?
    3. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by MrZaius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >...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 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 in your path, your legs are prone to the same drawbacks.

    4. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by YeeHaW_Jelte · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "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.

      --

      ---
      "The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
    5. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think this is the appropriate time for the requisite "Whoosh" sound...

      (The parent poster is probably Charles Xavier. Or a Battlebot.)

    6. Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again. by Hotawa+Hawk-eye · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.)

  2. Re:Just add beer... by retech · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And a great story to tell when a house stumbles into you!

  3. Re:Just a gimmick. Too small. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Probably not too pleasant to be in when it is "walking".

    Actually, babies would probably love it, sleeping peacefully,,,till the house stops moving.

  4. Maybe a dorm room... by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!
  5. Exotic bloody solids by kahei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and needless to say these guys design everything as a truncated octahedron or a hexagonal prism (on it's side, yet, so there are no vertical walls) and never as a BORING OLD CUBOID. Because having wide flat floors to live on and vertical walls to put doors in would be too boring and traditional and convenient.

    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?

    --
    Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
  6. Imperial walker? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just add a neck, some turbolasers, sells as "AT-AT mark2" and profit!

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time