For those of you unfamiliar with the Myst series of video games, the basic designs of much of the architecture and machinery within the worlds explored are very much in the mould of Steampunk. And I figure it’d be really cool to be able to design a modern house with that stylistic idea in mind.
That is, to have the home semi-intertwined with natural settings, like an overhanging cliff-face or a garden of tall broad tropical plants, a natural pool or waterfall, etc. Then the house itself is made up of separate buildings built of brass, and wood panelling. Each building connected by metallic walkways and stairways that can be raised and lowered by operating hydraulic levers. Gauges and lights indicate at every operation. Huge bay windows, circular and tesselated, overlook a spectacular vista. Elevators hiss and clank to get to lower levels. Machinery with mysterious buttons and wheels unfold and spin whenever a door or window opens. Cable cars on tracks take you to your basement via a spectacular path through your extensive exotic parklands and twisting underground tunnels.
in reality the house would be built like any other modern home, with electrics and plumbing and suchlike, so the abovementioned cool funky steampunk machinery is really all just artifice and pretend… but it’d be just so cool!
Has anyone in real life anywhere actually tried to create a home like this?
I’ve always thought that, although houses like that would be incredibly cool, they would also be amazingly dangerous to live in. Too many moving parts, and too complex at that (who needs to keep hydraulic systems in proper working order just to open a kitchen cupboard?
Well, it’d be fake. Just so it would look cool. Cupboards would use ordinary hinges and snibs, but you’d add funky wheels and gauges to them to dress it up a bit.
It would be a bit of a finger-trap hazard, true… Unless you were careful in how it was designed.
Annually, I am invited to the home of some friends who run a live action role playing event. They have something of a reputation for going over the top on their ‘set’ values. They usually spend about 2-3 months transforming their home into the perfect place for the game. Last year involved making a mad scientist lab including secret passageways, live electrical work (with big knife switches!), a contraption to haul the monster up into the lightning storm, and even burying (fake) bodies in the backyard to be dug up for parts. They’ve done other genres (vampire, the mummy (which made their house into a pyramid))…
I wonder if I could convince them to do something steam-punk-y?
