When Freeman Murray came to us with his idea of a nomadic structure made of pallet racks we first thought that this was a mad idea. Building houses with shelves? But as we know, there is only a small step from madness to genius. He spent some time convincing us that it was not only possible, but that he had done it before. He showed us images from a structure he had built at the Burning Man an annual event taking place in Black Rock Desert in Nevada where thousands of enthusiasts built all kinds of impossible temporary structures before burning them.
Not only that, he just did it again in Bangalore with an artist’s group called Jaaga. Freeman is interested in exploring the potential of this pallet rack system to build a nomadic structure for his iAccelerator initiative, where upto 100 people should be able to live and work. In the process he wants us to explore the way we could use this model to produce all kinds of temporary spaces, including shelters and workspaces in slums.
In the first phase of our design process, we are brainstorming on the concepts and logic of the iAccelarator Nomadic Ateliers (iANA). We were inspired by the simple rules and complex outcomes of cellular automata models, the go game and its strategical use of “void” and spatial relationships, and the architectural philosophy of Christopher Alexander, which evolved out of his observations of nature’s pattern language, and of course by the madness and genius of Max in the movie π.
We take this opportunity to acknowledge the very interesting incremental housing strategy produced by our friends Filipe Balestra and Sara Göransson for a slum in Pune, as well as the cutting edge work of Open Sailing for a floating nomadic ecosystem.
