Parasites in Architecture – Bordercrossing or a new solution ?
Perched between art and architecture, form and function, the Back-pack House is a walk-in sculpture with its own spatial quality. A hovering illuminated space that looks like a cross between temporary scaffolding and minimal sculpture. As mobile as a backpack, this mini-house is intended to be an additional room that can be suspended from the façade of any residential building.
The project should be a light and empty space, free from connotations and open to its user's needs. While still being inside a private atmosphere, one has the impression of floating outside of the confines of the actual dwelling above the public space. Folddown furnishings and a multitude of built-in openings on the inside provide extra living space with direct daylight. Sections of the walls could unfold, with the help of hidden magnets, into a desk, shelves, and a platform for reading or sleeping. The Backpack box can be suspended from steel cables that are anchored to the roof or to the facade of the existing building. The construction is about a welded steel cage, a plastic- or wooden box with interior cladding or covering sheets. Materials for the outside must be light like aluminium sheets or others.The backpack house offers a way of improving housing quality on an individual basis.It is a direct visual sign and reactivates the idea of the self-built anarchistic tree house, but one that is more prominently placed and structurally engineered. New space gets slung onto an existing space by a simple,clear, and understandable method.
Site : Take a tower at Sheikh Zayed Road and add the backpack.
Size : 12 sqm, hight 3,50 m
Perform with : Plan 1 : 50, Section 1 : 50, Detail of furnishing 1 : 10, Detail of Cable-Construction 1 :10, Model 1 : 25
timeframe : 2 weeks after submission of this brief
