Walking House

Like a large black robotic bug, Walking House by Danish artist collectiv e N55 invites visitors to “start thinking about the way you live”, says artist and N55 co-founder Ion Sørvin.

In October the house took to the road around the grounds of Wysing Arts Centre in the UK as part of the centre’s exhibition of experimental artists’ work. “The space in which you live has a big influence on how you think and how you act towards other people,” says Sørvin, and N55 wants the Walking House to be a “friendly way of suggesting to build a different society”, he says. To design the 38,000- euro computer-controlled, six-legged wood, steel and polycarbonate structure, Sørvin and Øivind Alexander Slaatto worked with Sam Kronick from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1996, the Copenhagen-based group has designed innovative products and mobile structures, focusing on self-sufficiency, nomadic living, low-cost designs – like the Snail Shell System, a cylindrical polyethylene rolling all-in-one compact shelter and boat – and practical applications of sustainable technologies, such as the Soil Factory, a household composting device. N55 publishes details about its projects in “manuals” on the group’s website. “We are not working with some kind of ideology or something,” says Sørvin. “This is a practical way of suggesting other ways of thinking.” Robert Such

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