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i n 1980 Buckminster Fuller made the following comment: For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done.All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful. 9 Although on a global scale we can question the success of Fuller’s scheme, the following projects contribute and support alternative prop- ositions for living.They link inflatables to freedom and mobility and stimulate our thinking about less tangible things: our relationships to each other and our individuality in modern day culture and society. Canadian experience A paradigm of combining new materials with old technologies and applying inflatable prototypes to everyday life and environment is the Wood Powered Inflated Building by Steve Topping, a Montreal-based artist. Canada is known for its wide and wild nature and Topping believes that winter camping is a quintessential Canadian experience 10 . The Wood Powered Inflated Building is a lightweight and portable shelter that inflates when heated. Inspired by the Huron First Nation’s way of drawing outside air to the fire inside a shelter,Topping is in the process of designing a wood-stove with a double wall flue that will allow the heated air to create a draft and to inflate a clear plastic dome.This warm inflatable encampment will be movable and comfortably livable while using the natural resources of the surroundings.

Steve Topping. Wood Powered Inflated Building, 2002 drawing.

All I want is to look in your eyes 11

Another example of a transportable environment is a project by Swiss artist Christina Hagmann — The RelationShip . In her project, realized during a six-month residency in Montreal, she built an inflatable ‘cover- dome’ that fits over a canoe and creates protective space for people to interact inside.The fast pace of urban life has alienated us from one another; the anonymity of the individual is a growing tendency fed by the disfranchised effect of popular media. Hagmann raises questions about different ways in which we interrelate and describes The RelationShip as ‘a wearable bodyboat and 3D paradigm for self-determined identities in flux’ 11 . We all carry an invisible, personal space around us.Through it, we control our distance, allowing some to come close and avoiding others. In The RelationShip one can sail away from urban life into an inflatable moment of true self-experience.

Christina Hagmann. The RelationShip

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O n S ite review

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I ssue 10 2003

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