Meet the Jetsons

This past weekend I read an article about a design competition where the goal was to create an architectural solution that would be a temporary home for residents of NYC in the event of a catastrophe.   The featured designer (and I believe winner of the competition) was created by Studio Lindfors, it was called Cloud City.

Because of its population density and concentrated infrastructure, the City is not well suited for traditional post-disaster housing, such as mobile homes. CLOUD CITY is literally an uplifting experience that will allow communities to remain intact as they pull themselves out of the rubble. The homes can be rapidly deployed with minimal site preparation. They are intended to ‘plug in’ to existing utility services, and can be deployed by a team of four workers in roughly an hour. Once airborne, the floating homes allow construction crews below to work unimpeded, speeding up the recovery effort. This in turn reduces cost overruns and unnecessary delays.

I was moved by this so much so that I was thinking about it most of the weekend. I honestly think these types of designs for the way we live are just around the corner.  I remember as a kid thinking how fun it would be to live like the Jetsons, but really only believing that possibility in my lifetime was about as tangible as ‘magic’.  With the rapid pace of technology and human intelligence being used for creations that were once deemed to live only within the walls of our imagination, I can’t help but wonder how many people are noticing the current life around us. Are we taking the time to notice the small things in each day that are breathe-taking and euphoric in simplicity alone?  We’re all running to a distance ahead of us, racing to create a better future – chasing goals and dreams, but in this race to beat our own ‘personal best’ we need to stop, pace ourselves to live the moments that get us there.

So if we move to our Cloud City will we lose the energy and information that exists everywhere in nature? You know that rush and adrenaline you get from waking up super early to watch a sunrise, or to just sit on the beach with a coffee with an old fashioned newspaper, like I did this morning.  I felt so incredibly happy in that moment and again later when I went for a run.   It’s moments like this when I notice my breathing, my abilities, the sky and the skyline and just how lucky I am to have my feet on this earth, and not having my head in the clouds.

While it might be nice to live next door to George and Jane, I’m happy to be grounded right here.