Designed by unidentified visitors to Bemis Center, their construction uses paper, scissors and tape set out  in the NYC Flock House. All visitors can enter this flock house and design a Flock House, or work at adjacent tables.

Updated July 28, 2014

Model A – This construction might support a flexible solar panel structure. They could be positioned for solar collecting and lowered for washing.

Model A – Solar panels might fold beneath a cover for safety during thunder storms.

Model B – Suggests Flock House aesthetics integrated into flexible materials.

Model B – Side view

Model B – This position suggests an elaborate door.

These models point toward the sculptural and adjustable potential of Flock House as an idea.

This model and a sketch completed by an unknown person.

Sketch with model above.

Gideon: Flock House Model

Gideon, Flock House model with floor and wall extensions.

Unknown: Complex layered Mode

Tyler and Cammy Booth at the NYC Flock House design table.

Floating Flock House

Accompanied by Kammy Booth, Tyler draws A floating Flock House. His work informed by his Eagle Scout study. His design reflects his scout camping experience. It includes a “Trap for rain fly outside”, “three shelves,” a “removable hammock,” “clothes line,” plant containers, “Potty with waste bucket,” “camp stove,” “catch bucket to store water,” and “water turbine” as energy source for a light bulb.

Tyler’s Floating Flock House

Recycled materials he would use include: “heavy net materials, buckets, fence post, reclaimed wood, and bot motor propeller.” On a design team, his contributions are “camping and wilderness survival” skills.

Tyler is not attracted to a Flock House gathering. “No, I wouldn’t want to be around lots of people.”

A Flock House idea might address population displacement.  “It would be a back up plan. It would help with populations in 3rd world countries.”

Kelly Klepfer drawing in NYC Flock House on exhibit in Flock House Omaha Project at Bemis Center – Old Market

On seeing the NYC Flock House, Kelly associates to “adventure – childikeness – backyard Glory Days – Playhouse.” She would like to spend time there, and spend the night. To equip the Flock House, Kelly suggests “Solar energy or wind energy harnessing – composting or off site waste disposal – reusing, repurposing pot or portable gardens in little pots, Etc or foraging if smart enough about food/wild food to do so.

Recycled materials Kelly suggests: “billboards, waste from building sites, Removed matter from deconstruction areas – using everything that’s found.”

In a design team, Kelly brings “interest, skills as writer and photographer, knowledge and experience.”

In addressing population and suffering, “Community can help / teach / supply. A Flock neighbor could have skills combined with someone else’s knowledge that would result in huge things. A communal sort of situation where everyone has a specific job that suits them or fits them and benefits everyone.” The opposite of “bureaucracy, which kills creativity.”

Kelly and I agree to meet on Friday to take photos of landscapes that could be background for drawings of scenes of Flock Houses in use to bring nature into the urban context.

Kelly Klepfer, drawing shows padded doors to storage units that fold down as mattress at night.

Kelly’s Flock House incorporates a strong covering of canvas or billboard material, storage pop outs, and comfortable sleeping support.

Tonight, the Summer 2014 issue of edible OMAHA magazine released at City Sprouts in Omaha. In a feature article, Where Art Meets Food, Dwayne Brown, architect and artist. describes the Flock House project.

Photographs by Cynthia Gehrie

Cover, Summer 2014, edible OMAHA magazine

“Big Top Tent” like shape

Seeing the NYC Flock House, Lizzy Davis wrote, “I thought of a raft, a weightless structure that is meant to always move. I believe the focus on the individual, the temporary nature of the project, and the focus on creator, undermines the environmental aspect by creating a space for those who already have a space.” Lizzy adds, “In a sustainable environment, I would think that the space should function as a necessity and for multiple persons/be in a place of permanence.”

Staying in a Flock House “would make an interesting substitute from a tent to a cabin. I would like to spend several days working in one.” Lizzy lists several ways to equip a Flock House with necessities. “Human powered machines (like the idea of a crank flashlight). As for water, it would almost be impossible to collect enough water from rain, which makes it entirely dependent on an existing water source.”

Recycled materials might be “used furniture, recycled/old clothes, melted down recycled aluminum.” “As an animator, I could provide video models of the finished product, as well as help with sewing and wood shop skills for cutting large materials.”

If Flock Houses migrated to a place, Lizzy says “No-” to attending. “- at least not without a plan. I would need to help set up a waste removal system, a schedule to have everyone rotate “chores”, and make sure not to disturb the area around the group.”

To the role of Flock House as response to disaster, Lizzy writes, “A flock house seems like a good idea in underdeveloped and overpopulated areas. For instance, the Gaza Strip, where thousands lack citizenship and are targets of hatred through violence. These houses would show 1) how little it takes to provide comfort and 2) shelter from terrible conditions these people live in.”

Lizzie Davis, “Big Top Tent” like shape

Details in the drawing focus on

Water capture: plastic liner for rooftop capture. Inside the structure a plastic hose carries water along structural supports to a basin for water storage.

The big tent structure supported with aluminum rods.

The octagonal base of recycled wood/plastic, 6 inches off the ground.

Recycled fabric sides, curtains at entry and recycled plastic holes in the roof.

LOCATED ON THE GROUND But Hung

Sydney Miller’ design for Flock House includes

1. Support System, 2. Chicken Wire, 3. Spray foam insulation, 4. Suspension, 5. Flooring: Plastic Sheet or Rubber Layer over support system and chicken wire.

Sydney Miller, Flock House, Located on the ground, but hung…

Words that Sydney associates the NYC Flock House: “space travel, safety, inviting, shell, protecting.” She “would love to spend time in the Flock House in the woods.” She would use “recycled chicken wire, old wooden cabinets and spray foam insulation.”

On a design team she brings attention to “appearance, look, research on the overall feeling/emotion.” She says “yes” to a Flock House convergence, “to be a part of a tiny village of voyagers… of course!”

She offers these words about Flock House and the world. “The Flock Houses, although created/made up of fragile material, together make shelter that can protect, which is more than what most have in this world. Designed for specific climates, the Flock Houses could be a success.”

3 explore NYC Flock House

Elijah thinks of “camping” and using “rain catcher, hamster running wheel, cut a hole in the floor, have little pots.” Use “the strong stuff” for recycled building materials. He would give “lemonade and tea” to the design team, “for when they get tired.” About its utility for displacement and suffering – “I don’t know that the flock house is as easily set up and movable as most refugee camps. But with all the different uses that it has, it could be more useful than just a tent.”

His drawing of a Flock House titled Cool Beans

Elijah – Cool Beans Flock House design

Paige working in NYC Flock House at Bemis Center – Old Market

This fall Paige will be a high school junior in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Her response to the NYC Flock House focused its “harmony, structure and sense of seclusion,” but also “togetherness.” She can see how Mary Mattingly’s dystopian photographs of a post-human environment “tie in with the Flock House.” To create a self-sustaining unit means to “collect water, create a garden on or around, and lots of surface space for solar energy.” Recycled materials would be “common ones like paper, plastic and aluminum.”

Paige’s interest is in making “the Flock House functional and livable, while also keeping the character and original purpose.” This would mean spending time there, staying overnight, and visiting set up Flock House communities.  In a challenging environment, “the Flock House serves as a place of salvation and isolation in a ‘Brave New World/1984ish’ future. A place where things can still be created.”

Paige’s designs are from a recycled bus and a technically upscale air balloon.

Paige’s hot air balloon is a Flock House.

Paige recycled a ready to travel school bus by placing gardens on the roof and furnishing livable interior space.

Octavia Butler in NYC Flock House at Bemis Center – Old Market

Octavia is an elementary school teacher who “always connects anything I experience to teaching.” When seeing the NYC Flock House, she imagined “a space on a school ground” that “would breed such creativity.” In addition, it would “bring consideration for the current state of our world (use/waste of resources) and how to re-imagine it all.”

For self-sufficiency, a Flock House requires:  “H₂O = integrate rain barrel, E = solar or wind? Garden boxes affixed to outside, or maybe hanging gardens?” Recycled materials to build Flock Houses are “metals, recycled plastics for covering.”  As a member of a design team, Octavia would bring her “experience as a gardener” and her disposition as a “puzzler.” “I love visualizing possibilities & trying them out.”  She has also served as a member of “my school’s outdoor classroom committee.”

“As portable units,” the great contribution of Flock House to addressing population displacement is how they “adapt and move to fit a need.  If the Flock Houses have H₂O/E/Waste set up, they can be used temporarily by those experiencing a crisis. It also would allow people to be more mobile if they have a portable shelter.”

Her drawing of a Flock House design is below.

Octavia’s Flock House has a fire pit and vent for heat and cooking, and gardens.

Flock House floor plan shows Convertible seating/beds and Trap door storage with thermal cooling.

Every day, young people visit Bemis Center in Old Market in small groups or with their families. There are two drawing areas in the Palimpsest project.  One is inside the NYC Flock House and the other is at large tables where archival photos and print resources from the NYC Flock Houses display. In the quiet of the day, it is not always noticed that people are drawing.  They leave their work behind, and it is found when I replenish materials.

I post these drawings with the first names of children, but not their last names, for their protection. When they write their last name on their drawing, I block it out, for their protection.

Rachel – age 9, grade 4

When they write their grade in school or their age, it is left on the drawing. If it is on the back of the drawing, I add it to the caption.

Katie, grade 6

Mathew

Unknown

Elise

Marissa

Nat, grade 4

Sophia, age 10, grade 5

Unknown, easel