Paper cuts in the air

Béatrice Coron is a papercutter artist who produces elaborate, multi-layered stories.

In her TED talk she displayed a paper cut with flying houses and said,

What if we were living in balloon houses? It would make a very uplifting world. And we would leave a very low footprint on the planet. It would be so light.

I love her focus on storytelling. Look closely, you will see people farming the free earth, while the houses raise and lower elevators, drop anchors, and other people parachute down. Coron also produced a paper cut called "Floating Islands."

Of course, real airsteading houses would not look like this, but her art is so beautiful and relevant.

Links:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/beatrice_coron_stories_cut_from_paper.html

Imaginary Flying Cities

Stephanie of WebEcoist.com collected a dozen inspiring flying and hovering dwellings from the architectural and science-fiction literature. My favorite, of course, is Fuller's Cloud Nine.

Buckminster Fuller’s Cloud Nine

(image via: steve dejonckheere)

Buckminster Fuller always had big ideas, including a massive floating city that would have housed 6,000 residents off the coast of Tokyo. The inventor of the geodesic dome imagined taking his spherical creations into the sky with ‘Cloud Nine’, an airborne habitat composed of free-floating or tethered spheres, each one mile in diameter and housing thousands of people. These spheres would function as hot air balloons, and residents would get back and forth with solar-powered aircraft.

Fuller's idea, of course, is passively floated on renewable streams of solar-driven heat differentials. The below is not as clear:

Migrating Floating Gardens

(image via: rael san fratello)

As green space has gone from ground level to rooftops in urban areas, at least one architect believes they’re due to go higher still. Rael San Fratello imagines ‘Migrating Floating Gardens’, trailing from large remotely controlled floating aircraft that would move around the city and even migrate seasonally to warmer locales.

The Floating House from Pixar’s ‘Up’

(image via: wired)

How many balloons would it really take to lift a house? In Pixar’s ‘Up’, a huge bunch of balloons was simply tied to the fireplace grate through the chimney. Keeping in mind that this is a fictional animated film, Wired did the calculations to determine whether balloons could really lift a house. Their conclusion: it would take 105,854 balloons, each measuring three feet in diameter, to make a 100,000 pound house buoyant.

In another post, Stephanie wrote about wandering cities such as:

Water Station

(image via: cgi society)

Another entry in the CG Society NVArt artspace competition is ‘Water Station’ by Steve Bjorck, who says of his creation: “The planet is hot and dry. The only water left is hidden deep under the dead crust. This nomadic colony tap into ancient wells scattered across the planets surface with a large, floating station similar to Earths oil and gas platforms. This well has a healthy supply of fresh water, they will be able to stay here for many months, maybe years.”

Superstar: A Mobile Chinatown

(images via: dezeen)

Chinese architecture firm MAD isn’t exactly pleased with New York’s Chinatown, calling it a sloppy, kitschy, outdated tourist trap. What could bring it up to date? Oh, maybe making it a bizarre star-shaped mobile city that can take the latest and greatest of Chinese food, inventions and culture to other cities around the world. ‘The Superstar’ is a self-sustaining city that grows its own food and recycles all of its waste so as never to be a burden on its host cities.

This one would be more interesting as a tensegrity:

Stacked City Portable Urban Shelter

(images via: import.export)

A different kind of ‘portable city’ makes it easy to create a home no matter where you go. The Stacked City camping tower by Import.Export is a long way from primitive tent camping, giving travelers an otherwise unattainable view of their surroundings and making them anything but low-profile. As Dornob points out, there are security issues to be addressed, but designs like these could be the turning point for real-life mobile dwellings that go far beyond recreational vehicles.

The website also reported extensively on floating cities here, here and here. A shame Michael Burt's floating Olympic city was not reviewed by them" just published, it is a serious proposal for floating stadia to enable poorer countries to host the Olympics.

Link:

http://webecoist.com/2010/09/13/sky-cities-12-hover-homes-flying-urban-designs/?ref=search

Museo Aero Solar Flies in Roskilde

The world's only passive flight museum is taking phlight once again. From the festival website:

Help build a huge hot air balloon

We are going to build an hot air balloon of used plastic bags. The balloon goes in the air at this year's Roskilde Festival.

At this year's festival you can look forward to Museo aero solar, a flying museum in the shape of a huge solar-heated balloon made ​​entirely of recycled plastic bags. It is a do-it-together project that explores new ways of thinking energy and space. In three simple maneuvers plastic bags are cut, pasted and decorated into a giant balloon that can float only with help from the heat of the sun.

The construction of the big balloon starts at the National Gallery of Denmark on 21-22 May when all Roskilde-goers are invited to a workshop. The event is free. Just bring all your used plastic bags.

The project was initiated by Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno. In the cross field of art, science and architecture, Saraceno presents visions of the solution to humanity's social and environmental problems using alternative, sustainable patterns of living in the skies above us.

The balloon goes up during the festival

During the festival's warm-up days (June 26-29) you are invited to Art City at Agora M where the balloon will be finished. The balloon is launched during the festival every morning at sunrise from 30 June to 3 July. One hour before sunrise the balloon is spread out on the ground and filled with air from large ventilators. When the sun rises, the air inside the balloon is heated and it goes upwards.

Museo aero solar is presented by the National Gallery of Denmark.

Links:

http://roskilde-festival.dk/uk/news/singlenews/help-build-a-huge-hot-air-balloon/