The living module is a square-shaped room built inside a cylinder open on both ends. Benches, chairs, storage, tables and lounge chairs are all built in, and as the module rotates, new furniture becomes available for use — but only for a limited time before it rotates to shift functions. Rotating on the hour, this basically gives a user less 15 minutes to take advantage of a specific piece of furniture before they relocate or fall into another person — something bound to happen every 7.5 minutes.

Lai’s idea for the anti-gravity module was first inspired by a comic book he wrote about a spaceship that folded up to take people to a new world. Lai’s hypothesis is that in anti-gravity, “one can rotate in architecture and treat all surfaces as planes – i.e. walls, ceilings and floors. Without gravity, all surfaces can be occupied.”  And if every surface can be utilized, then you need less area and can live within a smaller space.

Phalanstery Module was built in 2008 at Materials & Applications in LA.

+ Bureau Spectacular

Via Architizer

Images © Scott Mayoral

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