Download the Press Release > > HERE
Download the PDF about the Flock House Project in New York City > > HERE
Rob Colvin, "Stress-Test Architecture," DWELL, March 2013
Cate McQuaid, "What's Up at Boston-Area Art Galleries," The Boston Globe, March 2013
Flock Houses go to Boston with System: ECOnomies
January 24 – March 30, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 24, 5:30-8pm
System: ECOnomies presents the work of individual artists and collaboratives who consider questions of sustainability through the invention or investigation of ecological systems and communities. Through art practices that intersect with interdisciplinary research and DIY activism, the selected artists propose different methodologies and models for sustainable living. From a large-scale inflatable beehive to a self-sufficient urban habitat, the projects open up new narratives for environmental resilience and social change. Viewers will have the opportunity to broaden their own ideas about the environment by directly engaging with several of the artists’ projects through events, workshops, and performances that invite collaborative action and dialogue. The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooney and Dana Clancy.
Participating artists are Kim Beck, Center for PostNatural History, Futurefarmers, Mary Mattingly, Jaimes Mayhew, Maria Molteni/Colette Aliman, Plotform, and Marina Zurkow.
School of Visual Arts and sustainability@BU present a cross-disciplinary and collaborative project that responds to current environmental issues and the potential to affect change through critical dialogue and innovative practices. This multi-tiered project, falling under the thematic umbrella Alternative Visions/Sustainable Futures, encompasses a large-scale exhibition in Boston University’s 808 Gallery that will serve as the project’s hub to convene events, lectures, student-driven educational forums, and community outreach.
Bronx Museum Parking Lot:
Macklen Mayse in the Microsphere at Van Cortlandt Park
August 12, 2012:
c. Scott Patrick Wiener
Scott Patrick Wiener's residency in the Flock House Terrapod begins> > Scott's Log
August 6, 2012:
August 1, 2012: Flock House Microsphere has moved from DUMBO, Brooklyn to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx
July 27, 2012: Flock House in the NY Times > > HERE
Sustainable Living Forum and Photography Show (Friday, and continuing through Aug. 15) An art installation composed of habitable structures made with green technology — some of which are now standing at sites in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan — is the subject of a discussion and photography show at the Visitor Center in Poe Park, the Grand Concourse and 192nd Street, the Bronx. On view are photographs, drawings and other items associated with the structures in the “Flock House Project,” that was initiated in 2010 by the artist Mary Mattingly. On Friday at 2 p.m., Lonny Grafman, an instructor of environmental resources engineering at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., will talk about the project, for which he was an adviser. The photography show can be viewed Tuesdays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Both are free, but reservations are requested for the talk and can be made by e-mailing artandantiquities@parks.nyc.gov; nycgovparks.org, flockhouse.org.
July 25, 2012: Research and Development by Grant Goldner > > HERE
July 24, 2012: Travis LeRoy Southworth updates from the Pearl Street Triangle in DUMBO, Brooklyn > > HERE
Sustainabiltiy Advisor Lonny Grafman will present Appropedia, his project with RevArk Collective in the Dominican Republic, and some of the appropriate technology designed for the Flock House by his students:
Lecture today at the Bronx Museum of Art: Flock House and a Dominican Schoolroom. Local resources for building resilient homes, schoolrooms and communities. 10am: English, 11am: Spanish
Fox News visits a Flock House in DUMBO:
New York News | New York Breaking News | NYC Headlines
Flocking to the Bronx, a Flock House just landed at the Bronx Museum, and soon one will be at Van Cortlandt Park
Flock House on News 12 > > HERE and HERE
In DUMBO and Live Streaming this weekend: FLOCK HOUSE TV > > HERE
Amelia Marzac moving in to DUMBO
Flock House Spacepod has just landed in Coleman Oval Skate Park, on the Lower East Side with the help of River to River NYC and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation!
July 2, 2012: Greenpot Bluepot playing in the Flock House on ArtOnAir Radio > > HERE
June 29, 2012: Battery Park Water Systems Update 
June 28, 2012: Christopher Robbins Updates from Flushing Meadows Corona Park > > HERE
June 26, 2012: Tomorrow night Flock House Chromasphere opens at 125 Maiden Lane's atrium in Lower Manhattan. Please come celebrate the beginning of a four-month installation, where artist Greg Lindquist will produce a site-specific installation that incorporates the Flock House's geodesic structure in a networked, multi-canvas painting. Lindquist will also tend and respond to the Flock House's indoor garden.
Flock House in Battery Park on Inhabitat > > here
Artist Brian Zegeer's outdoor museum at Flock House in Battery Park, NYC.
Artist Brian Zegeer presents "Museum of the Mother Colony", and it's a pop-up memorial to "Little Syria", the former Syrian/Lebanese enclave that centered on Washington Street directly above Flock House's Battery Park location. Artifacts from the the old neighborhood-- photographs, business documents, and household ephemera--will be on display. Please stop by any time next week from 10-6 and say hi, or come out Friday for the lecture and screening.
Location and Hours
Sunday, June 24th through Saturday, June 30th, 2012
In Residence at Flockhouse
Battery Park, at Pearl and State Street, near the Urban Farm MAP:http://goo.gl/maps/DaKB
10am – 6pm daily
Events
Friday, June 29th, 8pm—Todd Fine, Director of Project Khalid, and co-founder of Save Washington Street will discuss The Book of Khalid, Ameen Rihani’s 1911 novel of two Lebanese-American residents of Little Syria. The talk will be followed by the screening of a 3-D animation, by Brian Zegeer, inspired by the book. Copies of a Melville House 2012 edition will be for sale.
Saturday, June 30th, 2pm—Joseph Svehlak will lead a guided tour of the remnants of Little Syria, on Saturday, June 30th, at 2pm, which will depart from the Museum of the Mother Colony.
June 21, 2012, in Conversation with the Flock House Project: A multi-media installation featuring a bicycle mounted vivarium and reverse glass painted prisms. A layering of forest-life and urban experience mediated through a lens of environmental consciousness and ancient spiritual practice. A work in conversation with The Flock House Project, a group of self-contained ecosystems migrating around New York City's five boroughs. After Mark Dion's 2007 Neukom Vivarium. By DEREK JUNCK HUNTER + MIRA HUNTER
Thursday, June 21st at Clocktower Gallery:
Flock House Performances
By Mary Mattingly, Maria Chavez, Greenpot Bluepot, DW-DK
Greenpot Bluepot inside of the Flock House Chromasphere
Flock House Chromasphere
The River to River Festival launches with a Flock House in Battery Park!
Flushing Meadows Corona Park - with Christopher Robbins and GhanaThinkTank - See Christopher's Log HERE and read about his research with Ghana Think Tank:
Flock House at Flushing Meadows Corona Park:
Setting up the Flock House at Flushing Meadows Corona Park this weekend:
Flock House resident Christopher Robbins log is up!
Flock House Performances
By Mary Mattingly, Maria Chavez, Greenpot Bluepot, DW-DK
On view on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 6:00pm
Premiering at the Clocktower Gallery, the Flock House Project is a group of self-contained ecosystems migrating around New York City’s five boroughs. It comprises a group of sculptural microspheres that imagine and begin to construct an open framework where created environments are adaptable, collapsible, and modular. Flock House microspheres can be built in, transported to, and survive in and among urban centers along three planes of living (subterranean, ground, and sky).
Reception will include a sound piece by Maria Chavez, as well as performances by Greenpot Bluepot and DW-DK.
Event begins at 6p. No admittance after 7pm.
RSVP by email at: events@artonair.org
The Flock House Project is a group of self-contained ecosystems migrating around New York City’s five boroughs. Reception will include a sound piece by Maria Chavez, as well as performances by Greenpot Bluepot and DW-DK.
Test Run at Eyebeam (June 12, 2012)
Slippery Slope Farm has become a Planting Partner for Flock House Living Systems!
Slippery Slope Farm is a modern sub-irrigated Brooklyn rooftop micro-farm started out of a personal love of food. While planning my micro-farm, I discovered Bob Hyland, urban food innovator and blogger known as "greenscaper" who advocates sub-irrigation planters as the modern way to grow food in the city. The incredible benefits of sub-irrigation not only convinced me to change my planting design, they have inspired an entirely new perspective on growing food in the city. http://www.slipperyslopefarm.us/
LOCALFLUX: http://localflux.net/PostView.aspx?id=52
Clocktower Gallery, ARTonAIR
photos © David B. Smith
An Apocalyptic Shift At Eyebeam 4/26/2012
An epic evening for the Flock House Project thanks to musicians and artists like Yoshi Sodeoka, Sabrina Ratte, Max Hattler, Sara Ludy, Young Magic, Warm Ghost, and Chrome Canyon, among others. Curated by Ian Daniel.
What have you done to prepare for December 21st? Built a bomb shelter? Bought a boat? Constructed a green house?
Regardless of the measures you’ve taken (or lack there of), you should check out Apocalyptic Shift, a Flock House Project Benefit that imagines a post-industrial landscape centralized around migratory, public, sculptural habitats that are movable, modular, and able to merge. The event combines music, video, technology, and performance to create a digital dystopia, and is going down at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center on April 26, from 7-12 PM, in collaboration with Fellow Mary Mattingly’s Flock House Project and curated by Ian Daniel.
Inspired by global human migration, immigration and pilgrimage, Flock House is built upon reclaimed, redesigned, and rethought materials within a culture. With wider adoption of natural systems like rainwater capture, inner-city agriculture, and solar energy harnessing, the project attempts to create mobile living systems that are interstitial, simultaneously autonomous and dependent on their local community, and shared amongst human beings. - The Creators Project
The Last Day Inhabiting the Flock House Prototype 4/07/2012
The last day in the Flock House prototype. It was easier to focus on working on the living system before it was built and I was inhabiting it. What about Water? Feeling on display in a cage. What is it like to live in a bubble? Myopic? Inside of an inside?
The Rhythmanalysis Lab 3/24/2012
The Rhythmanalysis Lab is collaborating with the Flock House on a sensor system that will monitor the activity of each habitat unit. Data are continuously recorded via a network of wireless, low-power sensors, and are mapped temporally to reveal diurnal patterns and the rhythmic counterpoint among the unit's living systems and the surrounding environment.
The following visualization shows periods of activity inside the habitat installed at Eyebeam, via a vibration sensor in the floor of the structure. Each ring of the spiral represents one day, with more recent data in the outermost rings. - Brian House, Founder, Rhythmanalysis Laboratory
Clothes/Bedding hanging from the Flock House Prototype at Eyebeam
Flock House Shower Head
Flock House at Eyebeam
The sphere is the interior, disclosed, shared realm inhabited by humans – in so far as they succeed in becoming humans. Because living always means building spheres, both on a small and a large scale, humans are the beings that establish globes and look out into horizons. Living in spheres means creating the dimension in which humans can be contained. Spheres are immune-systemically effective space creations for ecstatic beings that are operated upon by the outside .-Peter Sloterdijk
Planting Seedlings
Testing Water Systems for Showering
FLOCK HOUSE PROJECT TEST at EYEBEAM:
Join us for a soft launch party for the Flock House project
March 15th from 6- 8pm at EYEBEAM Center for Art and Technology, located at 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011
Also, special guest Darren Will and David Kanbergs will perform at 7:30pm after performance by artist Taeyoon Choi, who will be launching his project "Speakers Corner" simultaneously. Both exhibitions began on March 1st, when Mary Mattingly started living in a Flock House sphere (building it out and testing the living systems).
The Flock House Project examines questions of mobile, self-sufficient living units as building blocks for future cities. A single Flock House unit is currently being tested in Eyebeam’s Project Space, prior to the project’s launch during the summer of 2012, when it will travel to Lower Manhattan as part of a Clocktower Gallery residency and the River to River Festival; DUMBO, Brooklyn; Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens; the Bronx Museum terrace and parking lot, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx; Snug Harbor, Staten Island; and other locations.
Reflecting the future of urban space and building upon existing structures, the Flock House Project comprises a group of migratory, sculptural habitats that tell a story about a future when urban infrastructure is comprised of collapsible, portable, and modular parts. The form and function of Flock House units are informed by current patterns of global human migration, immigration, and pilgrimage. They respond to a greater need to move due to vagaries of environmental, political, and economic conditions.
Built collaboratively with reclaimed, rethought, and redesigned materials, Flock House promotes wider adoption of natural systems including rainwater capture, inner-city agriculture, and solar and human-powered energy technologies. As expanding urban populations face environmental, social, and economic change, Flock Houses can be built in, transported to, and subsist among urban centers along three planes of living (subterranean, ground, and sky).
Mobile Flock House living systems are interstitial, autonomous, and dependent on local community relationships to maintain, share, and operate. As living systems, they function as bridges for cross-discipline, cross-boundary, and cross-border notions of property and polity.
BREATHE IN/BREATHE OUT: ON MARY MATTINGLY’S “FLOCK HOUSE” AND THE PRELIMINARY NOTES AND INTRODUCTION TO PETER SLOTERDIJK’S “BUBBLES”.
Geoff Manaugh and Mary Mattingly in conversation about Flock House and urban mobility at Eyebeam!
http://urbanresearch.sentientcity.net/?p=320
BLUEPRINTS IN PROGRESS
A most immediate nexus between architecture and mobility comes in the form of bridges. Bridges often embody the rather stark and most certainly binary choice of mobility as being either possible or not: they enable the crossing of a river or a gorge where, in their absence, none or none as direct, ubiquitous and temporarily stable would exist (Harrison 1992)
DESIGNING THE BASE: MODULAR, EXPANDABL, REUSED MATERIALS
THE APPROPEDIA PAGE HAS LAUNCHED!
Appropedia Page for Flock House projects: http://www.appropedia.org/Flock_House
With a global migrant population of over 200 million people, international mobility of labor is one of the most significant contributing factors to both globalization and urbanization worldwide. Our research attempts to explore the local aspect of global migration: the places where migrants settle, form communities and networks, and establish economic and social spaces. This is where we share our thoughts, maps, interviews, articles and photography documenting the efforts of planners and architects to provide inclusive and sustainable physical environments for migrant communities. http://www.spacesofmigration.org/?page_id=1565
View the R&D done by Humboldt State University's Engineering 215 Class YTD in the Fall 2011 semester Here
HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION:
Mary Mattingly on Skype with Lonny Grafman's Engineering 215 Class at Humboldt State University
Today we held the first meeting of the semester with Humboldt State University’s Engineering 215 class, taught by Lonny Grafman. The students worked with Mary to understand criteria for alternative power sources, a food dehydrator, a power meter, and skins to cover the Flock House.
Skin Materials Criteria included: Camouflage, Recycled material, Waterproof, Durable/smooth, Stretchable/maleable/formable, Translucent, Shape-Shifting, multi-use.
Bike Power Units Criteria included: Ease of use, quick release, 10-15' cables for elevated Flock House
ADA Compliant Hand Crank Power Unit: Ease of use, portability, 10-15' cables for elevated Flock House
Solar Dehydrator: No extra parts, just the essentials, possible demonstration model, local material sourcing, sized for the use of two people
Power Reader: Must work with all applicable power sources, incorporate the logo (see front page of Flockhouse.org) and color from SKIN teams, must be able to: have an attachment for scaffolding, and be able to rest on the ground (grass or cement)
SITE VISIT WITH PATRICK GRENIER AT SNUG HARBOR'S CULTURAL CENTER AND BOTANICAL GARDENS, STATEN ISLAND, New York
The lawn in front of the Snug Harbor Visitor's Center & Galleries, Main Hall, September 2011
Today, I visited Snug Harbor and toured some of the grounds. Patrick Grenier explained the current renovation of a small room off to the side of the main entrance as the site of an upcoming permanent exhibition recreating Captain Thomas Melville's office. Captain Melville governed Snug Harbor from 1867 - 1884. Over the past few years, Patrick and his colleagues have been collecting ephemera from the late 1800's and early 1900's to reinstall and open as a permanent exhibition alongside the rotating contemporary art exhibitions that Snug Harbor hosts.
After visiting the current exhibitions we toured some particular sites around the property. Snug Harbor creatively merges its historic legacy and original architecture with a working farm and reuses buildings for an artist residency that at one time housed people who cared for the sailors. Visiting Snug Harbor, I couldn’t escape, nor did I want to, the storied past, which seemed to follow me throughout the Chinese Scholars Garden, Roman architecture, Greek fountains, an old church turned into a playhouse, and the shadow on the property of what was once a sprawling hospital, with long hallways radiating from a center like a traditional panopticon, but instead for the purpose of providing as much natural light as possible for all of its users, most of them very much used to being dependent on the sun and other natural forces at sea.
FLOCK HOUSE DESIGN CHARRETTE! TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
Participants: Kate Cahill, Ian Daniel,Gabe Krause, Anna Kunz, Lonny Grafman, Kelly Loudenberg, Mary Mattingly, Barak Pliskin, Christopher Robbins, Matthew Williamson, Raphael Zollinger.
We broke into three teams: Living Systems, Community, and Structure.
The Living Systems Team included Ian Daniel, Kelly Loudenberg, and Lonny Grafman. They diagramed human needs incluing water, food, shelter, sleep, air, space, safety and the Flock House strenghts, including accessibility and mobility. The Community Team included Matthew Williamson, Christopher Robbins, and Barak Pliskin.They explored ways to feed into and off of proposed sites, including building Flock House units out progressively as locations and new resources are reached. The Structure Team included Gabe Krause, Raphael Zollinger, and Mary Mattingly. They brainstormed building materials and available resources, composed a framework for putting possible material solutions online, and decided upon a base-structure that is identical allowing Flock Houses to attach to each other.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Bridging Buildings, 2011, Digital C-Print
The Investigation, Constitution, and Formation of Flock House
An exhibition by Mary Mattingly'
LMCC is pleased to present The Investigation, Constitution, and Formation of Flock House, an exhibition that examines the urgency and cyclicality of urban development and proposes building for a time when migration and adaptable forms of habitation are a necessary and standard part of city life. This exhibition poses the question: What will our built environment look like when we live in a city where boundaries are flexible?
The Investigation, Constitution, and Formation of Flock House probes into a social sculpture–an autonomous Micronation that will traverse New York City on a choreographed journey. Beginning by constructing the tools to make the materials, Flock House is created from abandoned vehicles dredged up from the New York waterways that have been formed into a recycled building material. It proposes experiments in compact, migratory living: interdependent and collaborative journeys.
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Dates and Times
Friday, July 15 – Sunday, August 14
Fridays – Sundays, 12–5PM
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 3–5PM
Mapping the Percentage of People Living in Cities in Each Country
Mapping the Percentage of People Affected by Natural DIsasters in Each Country
Version 2.0 of FLOCK HOUSE:
Reclaiming partially sunken vessels from New York’s waterways, interiors of car parts and other modes of transport from surrounding junkyards, Flock Houses are made from crushed materials otherwise difficult to recycle. Useful parts of these junked transportation devices are saved and turned into Tools for Living on the Flock House. By sourcing collected data from websites including UNHCR, UNU, Center for Immigration Studies, Refugee Council USA, NNIRR, MigMap, CIA, and UNEP, the shape and form of Flock House was inspired by patterns of global human migration, immigration, and pilgrimage. Flock House represents migratory structures as part of the city’s ecology.
Version 1.0 of FLOCK HOUSE:
Was built as a test space in the summer of 2010 inside Smack Mellon, a 1995-founded non-profit arts center located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, as part of an exhibition curated by Sara Reisman, Condensations of the Social. During the exhibition, six artists established semi-residence in the Flock House, with the space shaped and used according to each resident’s work. FLOCK HOUSE expands upon Version 1.0, and collaborates with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the City’s public permit offices to realize the sculpture as a mobile living structure with a series of public events.
Visit the log for Version 1.0 of FLOCK HOUSE <here> including projects by Ecoarttech, Ian Daniel, Kim Holleman, Kadar Brock, Tressie Word, and Paul Lloyd Sargent.
AIR SHIP AIR CITY:
FLOCK HOUSE HISTORIC TIMELINE > > link
"Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story,
which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation." -
Gabriel García Márquez