- Venue
- Wysing Arts Centre
- Location
- South East England
The Walking House is a new concept for living. A house with legs designed to amble peacefully through the countryside. Its nomadic occupants are tucked up snugly inside, lulled by the solar-powered motion of the house’s six limbs. Its yellow rubbery feet leave behind a trail of mysterious round footprints.
I was looking forward to trying it out, expecting an experience somewhere between riding a camel and being Wallace in ‘The Wrong Trousers’. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing and I was ready to go.
But alas the much hailed prototype was refusing to budge, poised with its right foot forward in the field at Wysing Arts Centre, just outside Cambridge. Rain had collected in its cheerful yellow feet; a ‘weakness’ in one of its legs had left it unable to walk.
If only the malfunction had been different and the Walking House onboard computer had gone mad. It would have been much more fun to see the Walking House stomping over allotment cabbage plants and snagging the washing lines of local residents, with would-be nomads chasing it and trying to hop aboard.
But I felt these had to remain quiet guilty thoughts. As in the children’s fairytale the Emperor’s New Clothes, by Danish Hans Christian Andersen, no one seems to be mentioning that the house doesn’t walk, and hasn’t walked since it arrived in England last month. You can stand in Wysing’s gallery and watch an incredibly slow film of it walking (incredibly slowly) in Denmark, but it’s out of action here and that is that. There is a booklet about the project, but the advertised gallery exhibition explaining the background isn’t there.
Out in the field, I climbed into the black body of the Walking House through its open window. I lounged on its sheepskin rug and enjoyed the views from hexagonal windows at either end. I looked at the wood burning stove in the centre (wishing it was alight), the very rudimentary kitchen at one end, and sitting area at the other with a bed above all made from fresh smelling pine. I willed it to move imagining what noises it would make; but had to banish more mischievous thoughts of silly suction cup sounds.
Walking House is the work of N55, a group of Danish artists, and is the autumn exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre. The concept was developed by N55 following their Interact/Arts Council funded placement at Wysing. The Danish artists Ion Sørvin, Øivind Alexander Slaatto, and Sam Kronick met with a group of travelers and learned about their marginalized existence. The idea was to create a new vision for nomadic existence.
The project draws on the clever use of space in traditional 18th century Romany horse drawn caravans. But Walking House is a different beast designed to get up and do its own walking on six computer controlled, solar powered legs. Its hexagonal prism-shaped body is built from steel, aluminium, wood and insulating materials, incorporating the breathing quality of the traditional canvas or wood caravans.
N55 envisage the Walking House as a modular concept which could be scaled up for large families or even whole villages. Moving at human walking pace the house would help concentrate the mind, the artists suggest. Walking House would cross all sorts of terrain, not dependent on roads. The artists hope that their striding house will challenge current thinking on land ownership and nomadic life.
But as it is, it isn’t presenting much of a challenge at all.
