Home for Acrobats
For our first project in the the 3D Department at Cranbrook we envisioned the “ideal home.” Scott Klinker, our Artist in Residence, gave us a lecture for inspiration and he mentioned that “Invisible Cities,” by Italo Calvino (1978), was one of his favorite books. I checked it out of the library and immediately fell into a beautiful world of imagined cities framed as a conversation between explorer Marco Polo and the elderly and busy emperor Kublai Khan. It is so good that I felt guilty because it wasn’t serious. I mean it is poetry and prose not discourse. As I sunk deeper I realize it was discourse as well.
Inspired by the worlds in this book I imagined a home for acrobats. The whole house is on a fulcrum. The kitchen is in the center and the house is balanced when everyone is eating together. Lets say walking towards the bedroom tilts the house down and the living area up. Walking towards the living area, through the kitchen activates the living area by tilting the house down in that direction and launching the bedroom up in the air signaling the occupants are starting their day to the neighbors.
I kind of thought here I am designing ridiculous things again when I should be serious.
Oh Well. . .
Now we had to design two products that would exist in these homes and actually make them.