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Innovation

Floating cabin appears in San Francisco

Accommodation woes in San Francisco? How about a cabin that floats 40ft in the air?
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

A Brooklyn-based artist has found a way to squeeze extra 'accommodation' in to the San Francisco area -- by rigged a vintage cabin on to a hotel wall.

Mark Reigelman, in collaboration with architect Jenny Chapman and engineer Paul Endres have created the 'home' as 'Manifest Destiny' -- a way to construct home fronts in the pockets of remaining space within San Francisco, California.

The project is a temporary, rustic-looking cabin which has been constructed and fixed to a wall of the Hotel Des Arts. It floats approximately 40 feet in the air, and due to the hotel's considerable height, can be seen very easily from downtown.

It measures 7 x 8 x 11 feet, and has been constructed by the artists in 'vintage' materials, including a welded aluminium frame, and an exterior based on 100 year-old barn materials imported from Ohio. However, the cabin does have a touch of the modern -- solar panels measuring 3 x 4 feet located on the rear roof in order to illuminate the cabin's interior at night. The entire construction weighs over 1000 lbs.

In light of its contemporary surroundings, the vintage cabin's structure undeniably stands out like a sore thumb. The developers say that the idea surrounding the construction was to purposefully make sure the cabin demonstrated the difference between modern construction and traditional buildings with 'a romantic spirit'. It is designed to be a 'commentary on the arrogance of Western expansion'.

The art installation is sadly a temporary fixture. It will remain on view until October 2012.

Image credit: Manifest Destiny/ Cesar Rubio Photography

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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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