Skip to main content

Tricycle House pedal-powered RV offers lots of home comforts

The idea of living life on the road in an RV can be appealing. Unfortunately, most RV’s aren’t very environmentally friendly, nor are they self-sufficient. However, the Tricycle House isn’t like most RV’s, as it relies on pedal power to move between destinations, and boasts several pieces of clever folding furniture to provide those much-needed home comforts.Conceived by architectural firm People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO) for 2012’s “Get It Louder” Exhibition in Beijing, the Tricycle House addresses the fact that private ownership of land is not permitted in China. The pedal-powered RV envisions a future in which individual Chinese people are able to more fully connect with their land, while living simply and sustainably, on their own terms.
The Tardis-like house structure is affixed to a tricycle and constructed from polypropylene (a thermoplastic polymer). The polypropylene is cut with a CNC router, before being folded and welded into shape, retaining its strength but gaining a certain degree of flexibility. This allows the Tricycle House to open like an accordion, and offer modern amenities like a bath, bed, and water tank. It can even attach to other Tricycle Houses to increase available space.The images produced by PIDO impart a real sense of the attention to detail which has been accomplished, with an ingenious series of drawers, shelves and fold-away cupboards all packed into the miniature mobile home. A dining table converts into a bed, and the sink, stove, and bath all collapse into the front wall – each inch of space is utilized.
There’s no electricity on-board, so the only lighting which will be on offer for residents of the Tricycle House is that which seeps through the translucent polypropylene building material. The finer details of exactly how a bath and stove would work safely aren’t expanded upon by the designers.In addition to the Tricycle House, PIDO also fabricated a smaller Tricycle Garden companion vehicle (pictured above), giving each Tricycle House resident their own piece of portable land. PIDO further imagines multiple Tricycle Homes and Tricycle Gardens coming together to form a veritable mobile caravan community.
Admittedly, the Tricycle House isn’t the only pedal-powered RV to be created, and one can't help but reel off a mental list of questions concerning the efficacy of PIDO's vision when taking in the impressive features. Despite these caveats, the Tricycle House does offer a very thought-provoking concept of sustainable nomadic living, which also asks questions of current Chinese government policy regarding land ownership.
As of writing, we’ve heard no word on plans to bring the House Tricycle to market, but it's demonstrated in the video below.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NES robot mash-up competes in robo boxing tournament

In a move that brings back memories of the  R.O.B.  (Robotic Operating Buddy) that was available for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Japanese hobbyist Izumi Ninagawa has simplified the controls of a modern fighting robot to work with a Famicom (8-bit NES) game pad – which has one of the most basic button configurations around. The NES-styled robot even competed in a robot boxing tournament earlier this year Ninagawa's XEMNES robot is based on a lightweight kit sold by De Agostini called  ROBO-XERO , which weighs less than one kilogram (2.2 pounds) and is powered by 24 Futaba servo motors. By attaching a Bluetooth dongle to the robot with a special micro controller, Ninagawa was able to take advantage of various wireless controllers, including the Nintendo Wii remote. The remote was then hidden inside the shell of a Famicom, and attached to the Famicom controller using an adapter to complete the set-up. Despite the NES pad's limited number of buttons, variou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nanotubes boost potential of salinity power as a renewable energy source

In November 2009, Norwegian state owned electricity company Statkraft opened the world’s first  osmotic power plant prototype , which generates electricity from the difference in the salt concentration between river water and sea water. While osmotic power is a clean, renewable energy source, its commercial use has been limited due to the low generating capacities offered by current technology – the Statkraft plant, for example, has a capacity of about 4 kW. Now researchers have discovered a new way to harness osmotic power that they claim would enable a 1 m 2  (10.7 sq. ft.) membrane to have the same 4 kW capacity as the entire Statkraft plant. The global osmotic, or salinity gradient, power capacity, which is concentrated at the mouths of rivers, is estimated by Statkraft to be in the region of 1,600 to 1,700 TWh annually. Electricity can be generated through the osmotic phenomena that results when a reservoir of fresh water is brought into contact with a reservoir ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sun will cause pause in Mars exploration in April

NASA is taking an enforced holiday of sorts in April as it suspends Mars exploration missions for 17 to 21 days. This isn't due to budget cuts, but rather because Mars will be in conjunction with the Sun during April, which will make direct communications with the probes difficult, if not impossible. During this time, mission control will place NASA’s unmanned Mars spacecraft on low activity and will not send any new command signals.In April, Mars and the Earth will be on opposite sides of the Sun. Because of the different orbital speeds of the two planets, this occurs every 26 months and because Mars is so close to the powerful radiation of the Sun, this can disrupt communications with spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet or on its surface. This is especially true this year because Mars will pass at an angle of only 0.4 degrees away from the Sun’s disk on April 17. What is worse, this is during at the peak of the Sun’s active phase of its 22-year cycle. Though the Sun isn...
Post a Comment
Read more