A project exploring new strategies for designing the home 2007

In the world of today's building, purpose, program and event change rapidly. A single location can give rise to many simultaneous events. Within the home all rooms have become living rooms. Distinctions in terms of use are now time based, not made so much by the provision of dedicated spaces or services as they were in the past. Every room has a television in it and your mobile phone is always with you. Furniture and mobile partitions, rather than fixed walls, can define boundaries, to create and distinguish many of the desired activity zones. In this project we have focused on the capacity for space to allow or encourage change and flexibility. Architecture can be defined as a control system for our experiences of the world, filtering out the unwelcome and celebrating the desired. Architecture creates an artificial reality.

Flexi-Frame is the first technology demonstrator project from our Hyper House flexible living program. Flexi Frame is designed as a compact living environment, ideal as a second free standing living or entertaining space or as an escape pad. The house packs down into a storage shed and outdoor deck with pergola when not in use. When unpacked the outdoor deck becomes the principal living pavilion with an internal weatherproof inflatable roof covered with a second sunshield canopy for the Australian summer. The roofing inter-space between the inflatable roof and sun shade canopy provides additional cooling through action as a Venturi siphon to encourage air flow for maximum thermal comfort inside. In Autumn and winter the translucent inflatable roof gives bright and even internal illumination.

The sliding triple skin of Flexi-Frame allows users to completely customize their living space whenever they want to change it. Users can rearrange the outer skin of insulated security panels, fully glazed panels or the fly-wire roller blinds. Change your view or sun penetration at will.

A single integrated loom cables services to all domestic spaces. It uses dry break self sealing, spill proof, couplers, like the LPG hose at your local petrol station, to allow rapid connection to any service. The loom conducts gray water and sewage out, mains water in, electricity in, telephone and optical in and data through. This allows connection for any function in a given space, and different ones at different times. A living space can be cabled and serviced in a single operation. The loom is fixed in a channel in the floor. Access ports can be added at any time, positioned at any point along the loom.

The kitchen is conceived as a campsite within the home, an integrated appliance, easily movable to the outside deck or any other part of the house. It is made up of compact interchangeable and upgradeable modules for food preparation.

The bathroom module, extrapolated from aircraft toilet modules is designed around a recycling unit. This recycles and distils gray water though an energy efficient evacuated evaporation system. All the fittings can be retracted allowing other uses for the bathroom space.

Project Credits

Design team: Michael Trudgeon, Costa Gabriel, Anthony Kitchener
Visualisations: Costa Gabriel
Structural engineer: Richard Fooks
Environmental engineering consultant: Alan Pears