Flock House is an airborne habitat that imagines, projects, and adds another level onto the city’s skyline. On June 20, it will be a living prototype, inhabitants will imagine and experience some level of the capsule living in a future dependent on mobile cities (the flock house will have wheels on the bottom) while the elevated habitat will be able to cope with rising sea levels.
In 2025, the Global Urban Observatory predicts that city dwellers will reach 5 billion. New Yorker’s can: move to the water, inhabit Governor’s Island, crowd Long Island, and/or take to the sky. Flock House is a proposal for a space where “the sky’s the limit...”

Lonny Grafman, on his way from teaching Renewable Energy at the University of the Basque Country in Spain to directing a summer, appropriate technology, immersion program in Chiapas, Mexico, was the resident artist in the Flock House on June 23rd and 24th. While there, he hosted free and open sustainability consulting and conversations as part of the exhibit.
Lonny is the President of the Appropedia Foundation and while he was meeting in person, Appropedians in different parts of the world prepared pages on sustainable city living - http://www.appropedia.org/Sustainable_city_living.
Some results of this unique art engagement follow:
Things people want to see in the Flock House exhibit:
- Vertical garden
- Worm bin
- Greywater (without pee)
- Some way of reducing the solar gain from the windows where the flock house is located (either an external sunshade or a low emmissivity window coating)
Questions with available answers (from Lonny and Appropedia) focused on:
- rainwater catchment
- wormbins
- vertical gardens
- reducing meat consumption
- bicycling
- how to catalyze diverse communities
- buying local
- lawns to food
- windpower
- wave/tidal power
- passive solar design
- greywater treatment
Questions that need answers:
- squirrel abatement from fire escape gardens
- diaper service vs store bought diapers
- what is the vine hanging above my head
- is there a company that makes a solar shade adjusted for latitude and passive solar design
- is there any organic waste collection in New York
New ideas!
- rooftop PV systems for renters
- sustainability walk/open house weekend throughout New York
- making windpower more beautiful by using a more organic, non-orthogonal, distribution
Feel free to take these ideas and make something happen, stop by Smack Mellon in DUMBO, reply with photos, comments, links or more.