In the initial stages of designing and creating the Wearable Home, I considered the significance of architecture and how it relates to events, places, and emotions. Architecture is the interplay between physical space, network space, and mental space. As the world gets smaller, architecture will be less about cultural affinities and relate more to economic globalization. The wearable home may soon be the epitome of a globalized state. It is quite likely that with either the user-driven innovations of an open source collaboration and exchange, or a narrowing of actual product choice and a widening of perceived product choice; we will weed through and add to a variety of ideas, which, finally, will not create endless choices but fewer, similar choices.
In the design of the Wearable Home, I examine the cohesive threads of cultures’ and groups’ clothing throughout the world; from Inuit cultures to saris in India, Muslim, Hindu, Zen Buddhist garments, American Gap, Banana Republic, the Khaki Overcoat, muslin design prototypes, construction uniforms, kimonos, Dockers, safari camouflage, military uniforms, the blandification and brandification of garments spanning cultures worldwide to make one, general look de-emphasizing self and re-emphasizing everything else (collaboration, ideas, survival, modularity, etc.). I think this, over time, is a creative way to think about the outcome of mega-mergers and the illusion of choice, technology and the idea of utopia, as well as wiki-run systems. The result, then, may be that one wearer would be indistinguishable from the other, thus greatly alleviating the threat of the end of privacy. Our distinguishing features would be greatly masked in this context to the naked eye, however the pervasiveness and scrutiny of high-powered networks would still catalog our movements and whereabouts.
Specifics:
The fabric used is is an outerlayer combination of Kaiok, a phase change material like Outlast® Adaptive Comfort®, waterproof Cordura, Solarweave UV protectant fabric, and the inner muslin layer. The fabric has the ability to keep the body at a comfortable temperature no matter the weather. The encapsulated warmers (like those found in electric blankets) are also woven into the innermost layer of the home, and through sensors, are adjusted to your bodies temperature and keep the home warm or cool on the inside to counteract the outside. The electronic silver threads in the fabric connecting to the sensors (one at the wrist and one at the ear for the healthy person) will give the wearers the ability to monitor themselves, their health and introspectively study themselves, as well as monitor the outdoor conditions, and transmit information to another, currently through a ZigBee connection or secure nodal random key coding and patterning frequency that can be set up to directly interface with another person’s home and information. This infrastructure will be able to receive signals from satellite and aid in GPS, mapping VA goggles, cel-sat and Internet.
The G-simpod has been implemented now in the watch-form and is attached to the sensor node around the wrist (see link: http://www.marymattingly.com/html/onenightGsimpod.html/) The G-simpod has projection features – two light-projection beams would beam a keyboard and a screen from a centrally based watch interface.
The middle portion of the home can inflate in water and the stomach portion expands to hold objects of devotion or dedication or need, but this area is generally kept belted in. Will we have babies traditionally? This area can expand to make room for a baby or for babies.
Layers may be able to be zipped off for hot climates and stored in a compact space on the back of the suit. Soft solar panels on the hood provide and store high amounts of electricity. Smaller batteries that charge off of natural vibrations and body motion power sensor nodes and the G-simpod. 30 small pockets are provided - to fit the pills necessary for a month of mood and health monitoring.
A water purification device should be housed. One choice is Lifestraw from Denmark’s Vestergaard Frandsen Group, however the wearer can make his or her own with a few containers, a muslin fabric, stones, sand, and activated charcoal (the best way to make your own activated charcoal is to burn coconut shells and let the fire smolder underneath leaves of some kind, depleting the oxygen while the shell ashes.)
A hammock-like structure is attached to and folded in to one long back pocket, with a covered cocoon-like front and back that can be suspended between two stable objects, but for many, hotels will still be the preferred sleep.
For protection, a mesh breastplate is sewn into the top portion of the home and similar safety is housed in the hood.
The hood of the home also protects from radiation or other harmful rays concentrated at the wearer's ear, i.e.: a listening or talking device that connects to the wrist, language translator, VA glasses (Googles), a sensor node that specifically monitors heart rate and blood pressure, etc.
The wearer can train the home's reachers and receivers to actually move, though this may require a wireless direct brain interface with a multiple neuron sensor stimulating the primary motor cortex. This would signal nodes within the reachers and receivers, and it is my hope that these will eventually provide a clean non-bodily substitute for contemporary sex or touching. The arms on the home are long to conceal what is being held in the hands, but are easily shortened or the armholes unzipped. The protective eye-plate - of UV treated flexi-glass can transpose Virtually Augmented information over your field of vision, whether it is GPS, or knowledge of the constellation you are looking at. The other option is that it can just translate the information and speak it to you through the same speaker that is used for your cellular phone device. With satellite mapping, it can also break up areas into zones according to more in-depth characteristics of its places or travelers. The wearable home will conceal, store, protect, and provide comfort to the wearer.
The Wearable Home is for a time when contemporary architecture provides temporal services, it become a space we move in and out of daily, and do not need or depend on. Our business is worldwide, our self is a receptacle or vessel for global connectivity and we have perhaps less need for the physical world. Many of our jobs will become more idea-oriented, and for progressive companies (which one must be to succeed in our globally-competitive world) wherever we get our best work done, it will be done, and we will deliver it via the web and rely on video conferencing or face-to-face meetings that involve travel and meeting cohorts overseas, most of the work-day. We gently become a global culture obsessed with the creation of ideas, of survival or the aid of mass-survival. The physical world becomes a place to enjoy through travel, avoid through the insularity of the wearable home, the omnipresent Internet and reprocessing of the physical world through media.

Please email me at marytmattingly@yahoo.com