Monday, October 29, 2007

The Business Class. NET


In Berlin Manu Kumar started a new network of office spaces for temporal office use. His first department is located in Berlin and offers complete office desks for rent, for the minimum staying time of 1 week en a maximum of 12 weeks. Besides a fully equipped workplace it also offers a place where you can meet equally minded people. Because it's locally embedded it knows it's links to local networks and can actively renew these links by new knowledge from new visitors. For the moment the only BusinessClass.net office is situated in Berlin. But by offering a franchise concept it soon should spread around the world. You cab book you temporal office space through a website that in the future connects all the different spaces in the world.

This concept is very inspiring because of the multiple possibilities it offers on a local scale to it's users and makes use of the Internet raising it's global interconnectivity.

For the real thing look at the webpage: http://www.thebusinessclass.net/bcn/

The DigiNomad HEARTBEAT


Every Nomad has a different travel calendar and almost every Nomad still has a base somewhere. Sometimes it's only an emotional base but most of the time it is a physically represented office or home. If we map the time an individual DigiNomad is staying on different places than the negative space underneath the x-ax could represent the time spend in this base space. The positive side is all the time spend away from the base in other spaces. This graph represents the personal heartbeat of an individual DigiNomad

new poll, NOMADIC PASSPORT?



There is a new weekly poll on my blog. Would you be prepared to change your 'normal' nationality bounded passport for a NOMADIC PASSPORT (global passport)? This would gain you instant acces to every country but you have to give away the symbol of your cultural Identity.

And for those who didn't see the movie yet of my wednesday 24th oct post, look at it it's amazing.

These are the results of last week:

Hotel (global)
2 (4%)
Hotel (local)
6 (14%)
Camping
7 (17%)
Local people
6 (14%)
Hostel
9 (21%)
Rented Appartment
11 (26%)

Friday, October 26, 2007

PLANNING the DigiNomad's travel to graduation

The planning of the rest of my graduation track is now placed on this blog, also placed under my documents (right column)

Planning: http://home.digisan.nl/janine/pdf/PLANNING.pdf

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Holland Doc: Living in Cyberspace

Upcoming week the dutch digital documentary channel is broadcasting some documentaries about the theme 'living in cyberspace' .

See the following link: http://www.hollanddoc.nl/artikelen/37231588/

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Instantly Changing Spaces



Who thinks spaces can't have multiple uses is definitely wrong. See this film made in Bangkok of a train track or is it a market space?
Instantly appearing architecture in a solid city structure, maybe a perfect solution for the DigiNomad????

Found on the neo-nomad blog, made by a German tourist

Yurt, rounded efficiency


Today a little bit on the symbolism of the well known Nomadic piece of architecture used by for example the Mongols.

While private and working life of the Yurt inhabitants is mixed there is a need in finding privacy in a space that is not at all physically subdivided. This subdivision is found in a set of conventions that structures the ground plan of the Yurt. Greatly ordered by symbolism it basically works as follows. The entrance of the Yurt is always situated on the south which allows space on the north side for the altar, the space reserved for religious activities. This north south-no
rth oriented zones also represent the amount of privacy wanted in the tent. The deeper you enter the tent the more you enter the family space. Only honored guests are allowed to go here. The front side is reserved for servants normal visitors and sometimes even animals.
The east-west zones are respectively for women and men. What results in the fact that men always have more space then women because men have more than one wife in the Mongolian culture. The last physical division is in the vertical direction. The dome formed roof makes the division between the earthly and the heavenly (holy) world outside. The hole in the roof represents the light and the sun.
This vertical symbolism makes it possible for the Yurt structure to locate itself and to orientate in it's environment.

In search for DigiNomads.........

Like you probably already noticed I'm searching for some respondents. After exploring my adresslist today I sended some messages to various blogs, fora and communities on the web more or less concerning my theme. Hopefully I can find some people to tell my about their experiences.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Caravans to Tartary

Found a new book called: 'Caravans to Tartary'. It's about a Nomadic group of people who twice a year travel through Central Asia in the worst wetter conditions. They live in Yurts and survive as a group. Trading camels for 45 sheeps and a lighter for a horse because fire is of life importance in the colds on the 'Roof of the World'.

Caravans to Tartary
Roland and Sabrina Michaud
Thames and Hudson 1978

The World is Transparent


The world is transparent is a metaphor for the world perception of DigiNomads. They can be on one spot and at the same time see what is happening on the other side of the world. They can look through it and move over it's surface very fast.

I work on a metaphorical model of the globe, created by 3d laser printers and laser cutters.

The globe is created by the 3d printer
The base and the continents by the laser cutter

A House is not a Home



Ella Fritzgerald, performing 'A house is not a home', Montreux 1969

If you are a Nomad and you do not have a solid home how can you still feel at home?

Monday, October 22, 2007

Thesis

For some time now I have been writing my thesis.
For my P3 (intermediate graduation presentation) on the 6th of november. I try to have a final structure that is mostly filled in. And is finalized afterwards only by some finetuning and little additions.

But for now an in between product: The Office and Home(l)essentials

It still excists of a combination of little parts in Dutch and in English so don't enjoy reading yet

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Free-writing

To get myself back on track again I tried some Free-writing At first it seems to be more difficult than I thought. I fall back on the things I already wrote before. So for now try to focus on just answering the question, 'why not a hotel?' in the hope that I find what I do want. The first step is working quite well for the moment. And some ideas for the end result are already forming in my head. For now this is more resulting in some architectural brainimages and not yet urbanistic. But I hope that the moment I find the architectonic image I can work back towards an urban view. Even more important I hope that knowing the result will help me to make choices for my thesis.

Why not a hotel? (pdf, dutch)