Kaleidohouse was the first project I worked on during my exchange year in Sweden. It was a 7 week long course entitled Unreal and focusing on ways that modern 21st century lifestyle could be reflected in the design of dwellings…
This proposal was inspired by social networking, starting with online chatting and ending with the facebook phenomenon. It combines the idea of a longhouse and flat/house-share. As the name suggests it is related to the idea of a kaleidoscope, which involves the notion of infinity and endlessness of reflections.
The design process started by simply adding a virtual room to an existing, physical one. In the same way one would be viewing friends’ profiles, or talking to someone through a webcam, one of the walls in this room is an interface which connects with someone else’s room as if it was a continuation of the physical space.
From the idea of a kaleidoscope, or just two simple mirrors facing each other, an interface on each of the opposite walls would create a ‘virtual longhouse’ of the users of this system.
This Kaleidohouse then connects a potentially very large number of physical houses from all over the world in real time and virtual space, at the same time offering an infinite number of different combinations.
It is basically a form of a homely flat-share i.e. a real home to its owner, a place of his own, that nevertheless keeps the lively social spirit of a shared accommodation. Such system would obviously require possibilities of privacy regulation to keep the two aspects in a harmonic balance.
There is no prototype of a physical house a number of which would form the Kaleidohouse. Any room with interfaces and cameras on the opposite walls and an appropriate width of space would be eligible. Each space is therefore different, unique, and it reflects its inhabitant’s tastes and way of life. According to the 6 degrees of separation theory the spaces could evolve from the simplest studio to a luxurious villa in less then 5 steps and anyone at all could appear on each user’s 6th screen.
Nevertheless, an example of such physical house designed for the purpose of being part of the Kaleidohouse is a linear succession of spaces within which the cameras and the interfaces are moving.
The interface here is a heliodisplay located in front of a window which is equipped with dark shutters. With the shutters open, the house is literally see-through with the opposite external walls fully glazed.
Closed shutters imply that projection is taking place in the interior, thus hidden from ‘the physical’ outside but quite possibly exposed to all Kaleidohouse inhabitants all over the world.
At nighttime there is no need for the shutters and the Kaleidohouse is open to its ‘physical’ outside as if the projection was taking place on the external façade.
Everyone’s home could then become, at a certain time, a public place in a way, each one’s personal contribution to the shared virtual world.
This proposal then completely reverses the conventional values of a home, traditionally understood as a private place where one can escape the public mess. Kaleidohouse is a shared social space and it is outside in the open that one can seek solitude.
