TinCan

Waterpod™ Project

A FLOATING WORLD

The Waterpod demonstrates future pathways for nomadic, mobile shelters and water-based communities, docked and roaming.

It embodies self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, learning and curiosity, human expression and creative exploration. It intends to prepare, inform, and provide an alternative to current and future living spaces.

In preparation for our coming world with an increase in population, a decrease in usable land, and a greater flux in environmental conditions, people will need to rely closely on immediate communities and look for alternative living models; the Waterpod is about cooperation, collaboration, augmentation, and metamorphosis.

As a malleable and autonomous space, the Waterpod is built on a model comprised of multiple collaborations. The Waterpod functions as a singular unit with the possibility to expand into ever-evolving water communities; an archipelagos that has the ability to mutate with the tides.

The Waterpod is mobile and nomadic, and as an application for the future it can historicize the notion of the permanent structure, simultaneously serving as composition, transportation, island, and residence. Based on movement, the Waterpod structure is adaptable, flexible, self-sufficient, and relocatable, responsive to its immediate and shifting environment.

As with art, architecture is largely about stories: stories of its inhabitants, its community, its makers and their reflections on the past or expectations of the future. The Waterpod is an extension of body, of home, and of community, its only permanence being change, flow, and multiplicity. It connects river to visitor, global to local, nature to city, and historic to futuristic ecologies.

With this project, we hope to encourage innovation as we visualize the future fifty to one hundred years from now. -Mary Mattingly

Waterpod™ is a floating sculptural living structure designed as a new habitat for the global warming epoch. It is currently scheduled to launch in New York in June, 2009, navigate down the East River, explore the waters of New York Harbor, and stopping at each of the five boroughs it will dock at several Manhattan piers on the Hudson River.

As a sustainable, navigable living space, Waterpod™ showcases the critical importance of the environment and serves as a model for new living technologies. It illustrates positive interactions between communities: private and public; artistic and social; aquatic and terrestrial. Built from recycled and reused materials, Waterpod™ is structured as a double-domed island for: (i) community and artistic activity; (ii) eco-initiatives including food grown with purified water from the Hudson River; and (iii) living space.

Waterpod™ is currently being built of repurposed wood, metal, plastic, fabric, and other materials on top of and adjacent to an industrial barge. Waterpod™ is structured as a double-domed island. Construction materials will include salvaged pieces of sunken vessels raised from the rivers bottom in the Rockaway and other areas. The main space is an amorphous shape dedicated to community and artistic activity including fine arts, performing arts, lectures, and workshops. Passengers will engage in navigation, mapping, recording, performing, art making, researching, and learning. The second spherical space includes space for hydroponic and vertical agriculture, greywater recycling, and alternative power sources. The third area includes a kitchen and shower room, and the fourth contains four separate bedrooms including a guest bedroom. The composting toilet will be in a dedicated free standing building. Waterpod™ will rely solely on it’s own power sources including a vertical wind turbine, solar PV panels, bicycle power, and a picohydro system.

Waterpod™ will showcase artworks, performances, tutorials, discussions, and other creative projects. Open to the public for guided tours, Waterpod™’s course will be logged, blogged, charted, and reported online. Through its dilatory, watery peregrinations, Waterpod™ intends to prepare, inform, inspire, provoke, and fortify humanity for tomorrow’s exterior explorations.