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Put MercuryHouseOne Anywhere

The MercuryHouseOne from Europe-based design team A&V is an eco-friendly room that can easily be placed anywhere you want it for off-the-grid comfort. MercuryOneHouse has solar panels for power and large acrylic windows for enhanced lighting and circulation.

Just 9 x 4.5 meters, this pod-shaped mobile lounge can be placed anywhere for extra space.


(MercuryHouseOne mobile lounge)

This clever design prototype reminds me of the self-sufficient house from Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End. In the golden age following the arrival of the Overlords, you could put your house anywhere:

Some of the more eccentric dwelling places provided the few items of excitement in the news. In the most perfectly ordered society, there will always be accidents. Perhaps it was a good sign that people felt it worthwhile to risk, and occasionally break, their necks for the sake of a cozy villa tucked under the summit of Everest, or looking out through the spray of Victoria Falls...

Update 5-May-2012: I found an earlier (and closer) prediction of this idea in Clifford Simak's 1952 novel Ring Around the Sun:

"The houses are prefabricated units," said Crawford, "and they sell at the flat rate of five hundred dollars a room — set up. You can trade in your old home on them at a fantastic trade-in value and the credit terms are liberal — much more liberal, I might add, than any sane financing institution would ever countenance. They are heated and air conditioned by a solar plant that tops anything — you hear me, _anything_ — that we have today. There are many other features, but that gives you a rough idea."
(Read more about Simak's solar-powered pre-fab house)

End update.

From Tuvie via Dvice.

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