"Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story,
which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation." - Gabriel García Márquez

FLOCK HOUSE LOG:

photos © David B. Smith

An Apocalyptic Shift At Eyebeam 4/26/2012

An epic evening for the Flock House Project thanks to musicians and artists like Yoshi Sodeoka, Sabrina Ratte, Max Hattler, Sara Ludy, Young Magic, Warm Ghost, and Chrome Canyon, among others. Curated by Ian Daniel.

The Last Day Inhabiting the Flock House Prototype 4/07/2012

The last day in the Flock House prototype. It was easier to focus on working on the living system before it was built and I was inhabiting it. What about Water? Feeling on display in a cage. What is it like to live in a bubble? Myopic? Inside of an inside?

The Rhythmanalysis Lab 3/24/2012

The Rhythmanalysis Lab is collaborating with the Flock House on a sensor system that will monitor the activity of each habitat unit. Data are continuously recorded via a network of wireless, low-power sensors, and are mapped temporally to reveal diurnal patterns and the rhythmic counterpoint among the unit's living systems and the surrounding environment.

The following visualization shows periods of activity inside the habitat installed at Eyebeam, via a vibration sensor in the floor of the structure. Each ring of the spiral represents one day, with more recent data in the outermost rings. - Brian House, Founder, Rhythmanalysis Laboratory

 

Clothes/Bedding hanging from the Flock House Prototype at Eyebeam

Flock House Shower Head

Flock House at Eyebeam

The sphere is the interior, disclosed, shared realm inhabited by humans – in so far as they succeed in becoming humans. Because living always means building spheres, both on a small and a large scale, humans are the beings that establish globes and look out into horizons. Living in spheres means creating the dimension in which humans can be contained. Spheres are immune-systemically effective space creations for ecstatic beings that are operated upon by the outside .-Peter Sloterdijk

Planting Seedlings

Testing Water Systems for Showering

FLOCK HOUSE PROJECT TEST at EYEBEAM:

Join us for a soft launch party for the Flock House project

March 15th from 6- 8pm at EYEBEAM Center for Art and Technology, located at 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

Also, special guest Darren Will and David Kanbergs will perform at 7:30pm after performance by artist Taeyoon Choi, who will be launching his project "Speakers Corner" simultaneously. Both exhibitions began on March 1st, when Mary Mattingly started living in a Flock House sphere (building it out and testing the living systems).

The Flock House Project examines questions of mobile, self-sufficient living units as building blocks for future cities. A single Flock House unit is currently being tested in Eyebeam’s Project Space, prior to the project’s launch during the summer of 2012, when it will travel to Lower Manhattan as part of a Clocktower Gallery residency and the River to River Festival; DUMBO, Brooklyn; Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens; the Bronx Museum terrace and parking lot, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx; Snug Harbor, Staten Island; and other locations.

Reflecting the future of urban space and building upon existing structures, the Flock House Project comprises a group of migratory, sculptural habitats that tell a story about a future when urban infrastructure is comprised of collapsible, portable, and modular parts. The form and function of Flock House units are informed by current patterns of global human migration, immigration, and pilgrimage. They respond to a greater need to move due to vagaries of environmental, political, and economic conditions.

Built collaboratively with reclaimed, rethought, and redesigned materials, Flock House promotes wider adoption of natural systems including rainwater capture, inner-city agriculture, and solar and human-powered energy technologies. As expanding urban populations face environmental, social, and economic change, Flock Houses can be built in, transported to, and subsist among urban centers along three planes of living (subterranean, ground, and sky).

Mobile Flock House living systems are interstitial, autonomous, and dependent on local community relationships to maintain, share, and operate. As living systems, they function as bridges for cross-discipline, cross-boundary, and cross-border notions of property and polity.

 

BREATHE IN/BREATHE OUT: ON MARY MATTINGLY’S “FLOCK HOUSE” AND THE PRELIMINARY NOTES AND INTRODUCTION TO PETER SLOTERDIJK’S “BUBBLES”.

Geoff Manaugh and Mary Mattingly in conversation about Flock House and urban mobility at Eyebeam!

http://urbanresearch.sentientcity.net/?p=320

BLUEPRINTS IN PROGRESS

A most immediate nexus between architecture and mobility comes in the form of bridges. Bridges often embody the rather stark and most certainly binary choice of mobility as being either possible or not: they enable the crossing of a river or a gorge where, in their absence, none or none as direct, ubiquitous and temporarily stable would exist (Harrison 1992)

 

MOCKUP FOR FLUSHING MEADOWS CORONA PARK, QUEENS, NY (FOUNTAIN OF THE PLANETS)

DESIGNING THE BASE: MODULAR, EXPANDABL, REUSED MATERIALS

THE APPROPEDIA PAGE HAS LAUNCHED!

Appropedia Page for Flock House projects: http://www.appropedia.org/Flock_House

With a global migrant population of over 200 million people, international mobility of labor is one of the most significant contributing factors to both globalization and urbanization worldwide. Our research attempts to explore the local aspect of global migration: the places where migrants settle, form communities and networks, and establish economic and social spaces. This is where we share our thoughts, maps, interviews, articles and photography documenting the efforts of planners and architects to provide inclusive and sustainable physical environments for migrant communities. http://www.spacesofmigration.org/?page_id=1565

View the R&D done by Humboldt State University's Engineering 215 Class YTD in the Fall 2011 semester Here

A Liter of Light Video

HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION:

Mary Mattingly on Skype with Lonny Grafman's Engineering 215 Class at Humboldt State University

Today we held the first meeting of the semester with Humboldt State University’s Engineering 215 class, taught by Lonny Grafman. The students worked with Mary to understand criteria for alternative power sources, a food dehydrator, a power meter, and skins to cover the Flock House.

Skin Materials Criteria included: Camouflage, Recycled material, Waterproof, Durable/smooth, Stretchable/maleable/formable, Translucent, Shape-Shifting, multi-use.

Bike Power Units Criteria included: Ease of use, quick release, 10-15' cables for elevated Flock House

ADA Compliant Hand Crank Power Unit: Ease of use, portability, 10-15' cables for elevated Flock House

Solar Dehydrator: No extra parts, just the essentials, possible demonstration model, local material sourcing, sized for the use of two people

Power Reader: Must work with all applicable power sources, incorporate the logo (see front page of Flockhouse.org) and color from SKIN teams, must be able to: have an attachment for scaffolding, and be able to rest on the ground (grass or cement)

 

SITE VISIT WITH PATRICK GRENIER AT SNUG HARBOR'S CULTURAL CENTER AND BOTANICAL GARDENS, STATEN ISLAND, New York

The lawn in front of the Snug Harbor Visitor's Center & Galleries, Main Hall, September 2011

Today, I visited Snug Harbor and toured some of the grounds. Patrick Grenier explained the current renovation of a small room off to the side of the main entrance as the site of an upcoming permanent exhibition recreating Captain Thomas Melville's office. Captain Melville governed Snug Harbor from 1867 - 1884. Over the past few years, Patrick and his colleagues have been collecting ephemera from the late 1800's and early 1900's to reinstall and open as a permanent exhibition alongside the rotating contemporary art exhibitions that Snug Harbor hosts.

After visiting the current exhibitions we toured some particular sites around the property. Snug Harbor creatively merges its historic legacy and original architecture with a working farm and reuses buildings for an artist residency that at one time housed people who cared for the sailors. Visiting Snug Harbor, I couldn’t escape, nor did I want to, the storied past, which seemed to follow me throughout the Chinese Scholars Garden, Roman architecture, Greek fountains, an old church turned into a playhouse, and the shadow on the property of what was once a sprawling hospital, with long hallways radiating from a center like a traditional panopticon, but instead for the purpose of providing as much natural light as possible for all of its users, most of them very much used to being dependent on the sun and other natural forces at sea.

FLOCK HOUSE DESIGN CHARRETTE! TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011

Participants: Kate Cahill, Ian Daniel,Gabe Krause, Anna Kunz, Lonny Grafman, Kelly Loudenberg, Mary Mattingly, Barak Pliskin, Christopher Robbins, Matthew Williamson, Raphael Zollinger.

We broke into three teams: Living Systems, Community, and Structure.

The Living Systems Team included Ian Daniel, Kelly Loudenberg, and Lonny Grafman. They diagramed human needs incluing water, food, shelter, sleep, air, space, safety and the Flock House strenghts, including accessibility and mobility. The Community Team included Matthew Williamson, Christopher Robbins, and Barak Pliskin.They explored ways to feed into and off of proposed sites, including building Flock House units out progressively as locations and new resources are reached. The Structure Team included Gabe Krause, Raphael Zollinger, and Mary Mattingly. They brainstormed building materials and available resources, composed a framework for putting possible material solutions online, and decided upon a base-structure that is identical allowing Flock Houses to attach to each other.