I
have written several times about the idea of a 'wearable home' -- a
self-contained environment that would allow the 'wearer/resident' to
live comfortably 'outdoors' anywhere on Earth. The standard human
solution to the problem of inhospitable climate is an extravagant
invention called the 'single family home', which contains as many as a
dozen different single-purpose unconfigurable 'rooms', must be
abandoned in favour of another model when the occupant's lifestyle
changes, and consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels to keep the entire
structure at a comfortable temperature, even when the occupant is away
from it.
There are several more economical solutions in
widespread use. The most enduring of these is the deer-and-harehide
suit of the aboriginal peoples of the Arctic, which allows the
hunter-gatherer tribes to travel long distances comfortably, and
requires the construction of only a simple, inexpensive and temporary
dwelling for the few activities that cannot be carried out comfortably
out-of-doors. These natural suits are, for the Ihalmiut, the perfect house.
In
areas more hospitable to us naked humans (the tropics), the few
gatherer-hunter peoples that have not been exterminated by Agricultural
Man build only temporary structures and abandon them as their
communities migrate across their hunting and gathering range. They lead
the most leisurely lives of any humans on the planet, spending most of
their lives 'outside' and hoarding nothing.
We have all seen the
wearable homes devised of necessity by the (mostly) urban homeless.
Despite the lack of cultural knowledge of how to construct such
portable housing, some of the examples I have seen are quite ingenious.
One man I spoke to said it had taken him years to perfect the layers he
uses to protect himself from cold, wind, rain and heat, yet allowed the
heat from the subway grates he slept on to penetrate on cold winter
nights.
In that spirit, a number of designers and artists have
created wearable homes suitable for homeless or transient life, or for
life after the collapse of civilization. Some of these have been
serious efforts, others ironic. The photo above shows a wearable home
designed by Mary Mattingly, who has even provided some specifications for it.
It seems to me that, whatever you think the future will bring, with all the recent research on 'smart textiles'
we now have the technology to design and create a wearable home. And
the possibilities if we can do so -- doing away with the need for the
single-family dwelling and all its accoutrements (lights, furnaces,
air-conditioners, furniture, and the need to 'commute') would almost
entirely solve the problems of the End of Oil and Global Warming --
seem too good to pass up.
So I'd like to propose a collaboration: Let's create, together, the Wearable Home. The three steps in doing so are:
- Develop a complete specification for the Wearable Home -- what it would have to be able to do.
- Research current and evolving technologies that meet these specifications.
- Design it.
Here's a very incomplete start to the specification:
- It would have to be comfortable and allow full freedom of movement in any weather conditions
- It would have to be, if not fashionable, at least not ridiculous-looking
- It
would have to incorporate the portable communication, information and
entertainment technologies that we now take for granted, built-in,
without having to carry around bulky or heavy 'peripherals'
- It would have to allow us to see and function in the dark, using either built-in lighting or some other optical technology
- It would have to be either easy to clean or keep clean, or self-cleaning
- It would have to be comfortable enough to sleep in, ideally without the need for bedding
- It
would have to be customizable both stylistically (we don't all want to
look the same) and functionally (e.g. temperature could be regulated to
personal preferences)
- It would not
replace the need for a place to store and cook food, but would obviate
the need for every other room in the modern 'single family home' except
the kitchen and (probably) the bathroom
What am I missing?
And
would our culture accept this innovation? We have recently invented a
set of technologies that have essentially eliminated the need for
offices, yet we remain anchored to an obsolete mindset that says
everyone has to have their own personal office or cubicle. We are still
building new office space, of which 90% is space designed for principal
occupancy by one person, at a record pace. Are we just culturally
unable to abandon the idea that, even though we can carry our entire
'office' under our arm and 'open' it anywhere, we still need a personal
office 'space'? And if so, does this suggest that even if the personal
wearable home became a reality, we would still insist on wearing it in
a redundant 'family home'? And even though technology
promises/threatens the end of privacy, will we still want walls and doors so that government, business, and community snoops can't always see what we're doing? |
MADE IN CANADA
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