N55
N55 advocates a nomadic life style in movable, sustainable micro dwellings.
N55 is a Copenhagen-based art collective founded in 1994, named after both an address and Copenhagen’s latitude, by Ion Sorvin and his late wife, the Norwegian artist Ingvil Aarbakke. N55’s core message is about freedom and the dissipation of ownership, "but it was also about mobility, about not disturbing your environment, and about not having to own land."
An early project, Land, consisted then, of buying and dedicating small plots of land to public use in in less populated places or waste patches of cities. Each one was marked with a steel polyhedric cairn, which declared the area as belonging to 'the commons'.
N55 gained notoriety with Walking House, which "is a modular dwelling system that enables persons to live a peaceful nomadic life, moving slowly through the landscape or cityscape with minimal impact on the environment. It collects energy from its surroundings using solar cells and small windmills. There is a system for collecting rain water and a system for solar heated hot water. A small greenhouse unit can be added to the basic living module, to provide a substantial part of the food needed by the Inhabitants. A composting toilet system allows sewage produced by the inhabitants to be disposed of. A small wood burning stove could be added to provide CO2 neutral heating. Walking House forms various sizes of communities or Walking Villages when more units are added together. Walking House is not dependant on existing infrastructure like roads, but moves on all sorts of terrain." Inspired by meetings with Romani travelers in Cambridgeshire, it is a prototype for a floating homes that rise and fall with the sea level, providing a solution to the problem of rising water, and as such can simply walk away from floods.
N55 thinking goes back to the conceptual and manuals range from topics such as land, rooms, shop, factory, work to snail shell system, small fish farm, or hygiene system. N55 freely distributes these schemes and instructions through their website; written work is available through the downloadable N55 Book.
Anne Romme and Ion Sørvin, leads the World in a Shell Workshop on April 2, 2010.
