BodPod

You may be noticing a subtle shift in the blog as of this post. First, the egregious abandonment of the 'tiny house on the prairie' moniker.What in the hells is a BodPod? Freak not, dear readers for things are only heating up. I'll explain the difference soon after I tell why I am not the 'Tiny House on the Prarie' any longer. Firstly, I think the reference to the pastoral image of a remote little cabin is selling this project short, with all due respect to Laura Ingells-Wilder. This is something more sci-fi than fantasy. As Orson Scott Card put it, fantasy has wagon wheels and sci-fi has rivets. This project is turning out covered in rivets.

What I mean to say is that I am intentionally making things from scratch where I could be modifying. After a lot of back and forth over what it really is I'm doing, I've found what seems to be the best description. This isn't a renovation. I started by thinking that I could renew from the inside out and make a substantial difference in the space. What really got me going, however, was the idea of starting new. It is now more like I am re-building. Further, the project and design isn't constrained by demands of a client. There is no end client. There are demands, but they are simply those collective demands which all design takes into consideration: clean air, a beautifully conditioned living space, being surrounded by 'growies', comfort, ergonomics, efficiency. The list may continue.

Which brings me to the Bod-Pod. I was trying to stab at re-defining campers in the earlier post. While I still think this is relevant, I have decided to focus on a concept. Bod is bio-centric on-road dwelling.

Bio-centric is emphasizing the role of the pod as a kind of life support system. There is a senseless glut of drawers, cabinets, and boxy forms in campers, trailers and RVs. This is 'dead-space' and not essential to fulfilling biological needs. It is accessory space. Bio-centric means devoting design features to needs. Streamlining gadgetry. Sacrificing clutter. Suppressing the hoarder within (starve it).  This is a change of priorities away from status quo to a home which supports a healthy lifestyle. Other forms of life are to be welcomed as well (still thinking moss shower).

On-road is a bastardization of On The Road. While I'm changing the title of the blog, I'll leave the url. After all, the Merry Pranksters (or at least Kerouac) are a huge formative influence for me. I think that it is important for our generation to reclaim this sense of freedom. We're the generation of indentured cubicle-college debt-slavery and there has to be a better way. Travel isn't something that should be set aside for one week of the year. Especially when it comes to seeing this beautiful country on one of the most impressive trans-national highways in the world. True to the ethos of On The Road, there are too many experiences to be had, to many paths to cross for one week of the year. We shouldn't have to sell our lives in order to live our lives. And I'm not trying to eschew work (completely), just advocating for working with intention.

Normally, if I had to design a home or any building that was fixed to the ground, the natural way to go about it would be to design based on its bio-region. But this concept project is different. It isn't made for a specific bio-region. In fact, it is made to be nomadic. So what could be the substitute for bio-region? Instead of place, I think this project is as much based on time. Our time in history and space in culture.

Dwelling means that the construction and detailing will be grounded in a tradition of dwellings. This means applying craft to the interior to ensure a sense of familiarity. The warm fuzziness created by well executed woodwork will balance out more novel design features that might chafe the habits.

So there you have it. This is the concept statement. This is a concept project to draft up a new kind of mobile dwelling.