Flock House Test Space, 2011

Flock House is an airborne habitat that imagines, projects, and adds another level onto the city’s skyline. On June 20, it will be a living prototype, inhabitants will imagine and experience some level of the capsule living in a future dependent on mobile cities (the flock house will have wheels on the bottom) while the elevated habitat will be able to cope with rising sea levels.

Built on a struture that mimics scaffolding (a common construction material generally associated with changing and growing cities) Flock House instigates repurposing the use and meaning of underutilized spaces by utilizing a raised, mobile platform as a multipurpose, autonomous space. Flock House will utilize hanging hydroponic gardens and a rooftop garden for vegetables, hanging hammocks for resting, water collection systems, and, taking a cue from Archigram’s Plug-In City, it lives off of the systems already built inside of Smack Mellon, including power, toilets, microwave, and shower. In case of rising water and resulting flooding, a kayak landing with 55lb barrels underneath (doubling as buoys and compost bins) will be affixed to the scaffolding. Flock House augments city space, air space, and questions air rights.

Flock House is open for visitors to tour during specified times and is a private live/work space that will host six separate week-long residencies. When open to the public the capacity of this space would be able to hold up to ten people at one time. Flock House is an autonomous public and private space that thrives on cooperation, collaboration, and augmentation.

In 2025, the Global Urban Observatory predicts that city dwellers will reach 5 billion. New Yorker’s can: move to the water, inhabit Governor’s Island, crowd Long Island, and/or take to the sky. Flock House is a proposal for a space where “the sky’s the limit.”

WWW.FLOCKHOUSE.TUMBLR.COM