The Cloud
Organism for Living
Organism for Living
The Cloud is an organism for living.
The structure is mobile, the space can be modified.
The building materials are air and dynamics.
(Technique is a means to an end but not an end in itself. Architecture is content, not shell.)
Coop Himmelb(l)au
Quote
“The Cloud is an organism for dwelling, mobile and spatially changeable. The building materials are air and dynamics. Technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Architecture is content, not skin. The ‘house’ as packed environment on wheels. The house from a can.”
Erwin Reichmann
Markus Pillhofer
Project info
The Cloud was designed for the study “Living forms for the future” and was planned as a realization for the Documenta V. It was thoroughly developed down to the smallest detail in terms of concrete form and structure.
Organism for Living
The concept for the Cloud was developed in 1968 as part of a research commission from the municipality of Vienna. The study “Dwelling Forms of the Future” dealt with concepts for expanding existing living experiences by introducing changeable, mobile spaces. The Cloud was constructed down to the tiniest detail and was supposed to be exhibited at documenta 5 in Kassel after being assembled in Vienna.
The technical structure consists of a stand on wheels on which a giant “can container” is mounted in which all of the equipment is packed. The packaging is constructed to make it possible for setup to happen automatically in a short period of time.
When in functioning position, the object is 15 meters tall – the height of a three-story house – and 18 meters long. In this position the “can” is at a 30-degree angle, which makes it easy to walk up to reach a deck, a platform that folds out.
The plan for the documenta cloud was to use the deck as a place to lie down and relax. The sounds of the visitors’ hearts were to be translated into optical and acoustic signals in order to establish contact between the space and the people, with the visitors altering the space. The deck has room for 20 to 30 people, floating at a height of 7.5 meters above the ground, and it is surrounded by a pneumatic skin – a transparent sphere 10 meters in diameter.
Project insights
Erwin Reichmann
Quote
“Then, as now, we also gave answers without being asked. We did not wait for commissions but just made statements, about new forms of dwelling, about new social developments, and how they could be expressed in architecture. We spent a lot of time working on paradigms for education – antiauthoritarian structures in society require antiauthoritarian architecture, like the Cloud, for example: mobile, changeable, not written down. The idea of the Cloud which is, after all, contained in the name Himmelb(l)au (sky blue). It is easy to overlook the fact that the idea of the Cloud is one of an antiauthoritarian architecture.”
