Air as a building material

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Since you asked...

An inflatable home is about as dumb as ideas get. An inflatable pavilion is maybe less so, for novelty's sake, but if it's going to be up for more than a few days I'd generally prefer a tent.

Why? I have some experience with inflatable structures of sorts. And I warn you in advance, this is going to sound stupid, because it is.

My brother's father-in-law is an interesting character. He made a fortune selling chicken and lives in a lovely ante-bellum mansion. Imagine if you would Colonel Sanders without the franchises. Each Christmas he decorates his spacious front lawn with huge colorful inflatable characters, proving that money and taste are completely unrelated. Represented are a 14-foot Santa Claus, a 12-foot Mrs. Claus, and a huge Frosty the Snowman. These are the sort of things that uses a fan with positive air pressure to keep it inflated. You can't buy them anywhere, they have to be custom made.

Each and every year for a couple of decades now these things have been riddled with holes by neighborhood kids with B-B guns. Every few mornings in the Christmas season Santa or Frosty or Mrs. Claus has a head slumped to one side or an arm dragging, and my brother or I or whoever is unlucky enough to be tagged for the job gets to deflate the thing, get out the patch kit, fix the bloody character, only to do it again days later. Believe me, I've been tempted to blow Santa away a few times myself. Only the fact that the dear old fellow is so likeable keeps his toys patched.

Now apply this scoop of reality to an inflatable house, and you'll realize that the concept isn't even REMOTELY appealing. Unless this thing is coated with Kevlar (and probably even then) it's going to tear either accidentally or as a result of vandalism. The material WILL become brittle with extended exposure to sun and weather regardless of any manufacturer's optimistic fiction to the contrary. The house itself WILL expand and contract based on the outside temperature. On a sunny day it will be fully inflated and when the evening turns cool it will sag like a Dr. Seuss drawing. When a tear occurs you will wind up awakening, not under your cozy roof, but under the world's largest airtight quilt. Your neighbors will never, ever, EVER let you live it down. That's if you don't actually suffocate and die.

In short, you'd have to be one certified moron to consider the option of moving into an inflatable house. The only thing that could possibly be more completely stupid is to flush one's architectural credentials down a professional toilet by building such a lunatic mishegoss. As I said, for something transient it's OK for novelty's sake ("ephemeral logistics" indeed!). But "architecture" it ain't.

Posted by: dave.leigh@...   Posted on: 08/19/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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