“Drive-In House” by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Conference:
- SIGGRAPH 1999 More animation videos from SIGGRAPH 1999:
Title:
- Drive-In House
Director(s):
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Description:
In the 1960’s, Michael Webb, a young British architect, explored the future of our living environment. His Drive-in House project envisioned an integration of habitation and transportation. This film is an attempt to illustrate the transforming mechanics, the sense of speed, and the experiential nature of his machine.
According to the original description by Webb, the system consists of a specially designed vehicle running on trucks and high-rise building structures with mechanical cranes. When a vehicle approaches a building, it drops its chassis, and the crane picks up its body, elevates it along the side of the building, and plugs it into an apartment.
To accurately depict the mechanical transformation process, the inverse kinematics technique was used to compute the positions of transforming components, which are interconnected through pins, rollers, and pistons. To simultaneously understand the elegance of the mechanical movements and the experience of the driver, multiple cameras were placed inside and outside the vehicle and frequently switched.
Software:
Alias|Wavefront Studio Version 7.5.
Additional Contributors:
Directors: Takehiko Nagakura, Marlos Christedeulides
Producer: Takehiko Nagakura
Collaborators: Marios Christodoulides, Michael Webb, Kent Larson
