Public: Architecture: Temporary
Porta-walls   (+15, -2)  [vote for, against]
Rearrange your house to suit your needs.

Modular interior walls with appropriate power connections built in allow you to rearrange your living space to suit your immediate need/mood. Bath and kitchen spaces must remain stationary due to the difficulty of modular plumbing and venting.

Having a party? Living/dining room too small? No problem! Pull down a couple walls, store them in the garage/basement/attic and open the place up! Expecting? Create a nursery in less than an hour. Need storage? Make a closet!
-- phoenix, Jun 14 2001

Moveable walls http://google.yahoo...+walls%22&hc=0&hs=1
553 hits on Yahoo. [angel, Jun 14 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]

I love this idea. Such an invention would have completely transformed my childhood (I was one of eight people living in a six-room house -- bathroom included in the six). Imagine: more than a drawer to myself; fewer fights with siblings; the ability to write in my diary, change clothes, or cry, unobserved.

<sigh.>

Go forth, phoenix, and change the world with your fantastic idea. I regret that I have but one half-croissant to cast in favor of it.
-- 1percent, Jun 14 2001


Art galleries do this alot. Big walls on wheels for more hanging space.
-- benfrost, Jun 14 2001


Walls on wheels (hidden casters) is what I had in mind as I don't think I'd care to have tracks visible. This also allows the walls to be added/removed rather than just rearranged.
-- phoenix, Jun 14 2001


Also handy if you happen to run out of paper in the bathroom...<grin> <Don't get me wrong, I like the shoji screens...just couldn't let a feed line go hungry.>

Hotels use things called 'air-walls' that hang from tracks in the ceiling and lock together when in place. No tracks on the floor, and they store in niches in the walls.
-- StarChaser, Jun 14 2001


Baked in my loft in Brooklyn. Walls on wheels allow us to reconfigure the space depending on what we're doing with it.
-- snarfyguy, Jun 14 2001


i think the japanese would say "told ya so".
-- anonymousno1, Jun 15 2001


I'd like a house where all the internal walls were the kind of moveable walls which libraries and archives use to save storage space - i.e. enormous racks of shelves, probably weighing several tons each.
-- hippo, Nov 19 2002


Real architects do this sort of thing. Look at some back issues of Fine Homebuilding magazine for more examples of good design and shameless over-consumption.
-- carjug4, Nov 30 2002


Combine this with the inflatable house idea and you have inflatable walls! when you dont need them, deflate and put in the closet.
-- Arcanus, Aug 26 2009



random, halfbakery