Aristide Antonas | Crane rooms

in Concept & Competition by editor — 5:14 pm | May 23, 20120 comments

Simple concrete foundations and elementary water pools are proposed to be installed in non hospitable beaches or arid hills nearby the sea. The room units form independent cells, covered during the day if needed. The private or public character of each room is regulated by the chosen high of every unit. Platforms move vertically following the will of their provisional inhabitants. A bigger screen, related to the bed, serves as a hanging home cinema structure; a table, a wardrobe and a shower are placed in the simple, moving platform. A common underground kitchen serves the needs of the complex; the reverse osmosis desalination plant provides drinkable water to the invisible kitchen and to the units (the water pipes follow the length of the crane’s mechanical arm). The crane room project is proposed through a double strategy concerning the reuse of crane mechanisms.

The first element of this strategy follows the rational of moving rooms: the designed vehicles are part of the vast research about a nomadic housing, reinterpreting existing old vehicles or mechanical parts of a recent past and transforming them to inhabited spaces. The units can function as autonomous moving pieces able to be used after a “do it yourself” preparation of a single bedroom.

The second element challenges the idea of another narration : it has to do with the post apocalyptic mythology of the end of sweet water. The desalination unit transforms an assemblage of crane rooms to a possible complex; in the same time some founded crane rooms allow the preservation of individuality concerning one’s apartment in this congregation and the creation of a landscape populated by individual units.