Storm system: Wearable shelter for the alpha time era
Abstract
In this environmentally and demographically complex start to a post-industrial millennium, it is urgent to reflect on the transformations that occur from the interaction between individuals, the city they inhabit, its surroundings and protection conditions. STORM SYSTEM, developed by Miguel Rios Design, responds to the question of a first individual nomad clothing protection against
weather adversities. Today’s population growth forces a reorganisation of space, in a variety of contexts that individuals face on large urban surfaces, as well as an interiorisation of the impacts resulting from behavioural changes. An unbearable logistic and environmental excess is therefore propagated (and vice versa), favouring unlikely scenarios of human coexistence. Pollution and adverse weather conditions hamper natural and urban ecosystems, resulting in a greater immediate instability of individuals per se and the collectives they form. Thus new logistic, habitation and protection needs arise, which require the evaluation of a new living context for the human being. These needs catalyse crucial contextual design thinking regarding its ability to respond appropriately to the new global habitat. The territory and the context establish the parameters for the combined intervention of design and technology. Similar to a prosthetic exoskeleton, STORM SYSTEM not only comprises the necessary formal characteristics, but also the symbolic essence we crave today. In its relationship with the human form, STORM SYSTEM is yet another prelude to the era of the redesigned man, a kind of hybrid between the organic and technology, and consequently, with its identity necessarily altered.
weather adversities. Today’s population growth forces a reorganisation of space, in a variety of contexts that individuals face on large urban surfaces, as well as an interiorisation of the impacts resulting from behavioural changes. An unbearable logistic and environmental excess is therefore propagated (and vice versa), favouring unlikely scenarios of human coexistence. Pollution and adverse weather conditions hamper natural and urban ecosystems, resulting in a greater immediate instability of individuals per se and the collectives they form. Thus new logistic, habitation and protection needs arise, which require the evaluation of a new living context for the human being. These needs catalyse crucial contextual design thinking regarding its ability to respond appropriately to the new global habitat. The territory and the context establish the parameters for the combined intervention of design and technology. Similar to a prosthetic exoskeleton, STORM SYSTEM not only comprises the necessary formal characteristics, but also the symbolic essence we crave today. In its relationship with the human form, STORM SYSTEM is yet another prelude to the era of the redesigned man, a kind of hybrid between the organic and technology, and consequently, with its identity necessarily altered.