Meet Daniel Krivens: honorable mention winner in the New to World Solutions, Work-From-Home, Metamorphosis and Wellbeing categories.
Daniel Krivens, Founder of Krivens
Check out his submission:
This is an actual project for a client.
In their quest for protection, our ancestors erected walls that constrained our experiences, and we have carried on the tradition ever since. Unless our buildings are actively enhancing our agency, they are constraining our evolutionary potential. Evolution went through a lot of trouble to create the pinnacle of agency that is our species. Yet most of our lives are lived nested inside creations that inhibit our ability to connect with nature and with each other. This disconnection is a global, omnipresent, structural limitation on our wellbeing and demands that we construct ever larger interior worlds that exhaust even more of our limited biosphere.
My proposal is to design a product that facilitates connection; both to nature and to other people. We believe that rekindling the conditions that utilize our evolutionary capacity for connection can bring balance back to our lives and to the earth. Our pod is designed to compliment the human form: it is scaled to the limits of our fingertips and maximizes our field of vision. Like our bodies, the back side is more armored and protective to leverage greater engagement in front. The safety that enables risk for greater reward in the physical world is mirrored in a psychological one as well: Psychological safety enables us to risk sharing new ideas with others that might precipitate change and growth. Feeling safe physically can help minimize fear based thinking from the limbic system, so we can use our prefrontal cortex for more complex and creative thought.
To maximize serendipitous interactions, we put the standing visitor at equal eye level with the seated occupant, making the act of approaching a stranger less of an imposition, as the two meet as equals. It’s just as easy for visitors to approach as it would be to walk away. The pods are deployable, solar powered, net zero and can power laptops, lighting, even a small air conditioner.
The result is a place to share time with others, synergistically working in a natural setting, or to enjoy serenity, surrounded by the excellence of nature in any of her moods. Instead of living separately from nature we can be a part of it. Our day-long intimate connection with nature can inspire us to become passionate custodians. Instead of interiors with low air flow relative to outside which leaves us vulnerable to airborne pandemics and mental depletion from higher CO2 levels, we can be safer and sharper while keeping comfortable with heating, cooling and lower C02 that can be tailored to us. Instead of compensating for our isolation with social media platforms that reward aggressive tribalism over civil cooperation, we can have real face to face interactions which help build empathy and trust with others. We can weather the trials of our times, but to do this we need to rediscover our source of wellness, and each other. It can be done with the right environment that fosters our agency and reconnection.
Click on an image to see it full size.
To celebrate his win, we connected with Daniel to see how his idea evolved since it was submitted.
“An update since the we’ve applied is that we’ve added a mobility component that allow the pod to pivot on its vertical axis so that it can spin to the perfect angle relative to the sun or view desired. With the pod’s panoramic glass front and opaque backside, it could be oriented to acquire light and heat when it’s cold out. If it’s hot, it could turn it’s insulated back to the sun, always keeping glazing in the shade.
This optional bolt-on joy-stick driven pivoting system can also be used to drive the whole pod forwards or backwards at walking speed, similar to a super-sized mobility chair, all powered from the solar panels and onboard battery. It’s suspension and power capacity are engineered to be able to drive on and off a truck for easy long range deployment. This vehicularization component also exempts the pod from a vast majority of building regulations that can encumber fixed installations.”
Comments from the Jury:
These pods are really beautifully designed and very well immersed in the natural environment that they’ve been set within.
It really does seem to fit in nature, despite it being a box. I like the inside outside connection and the fact that you can work in isolation or work with or meet with others. I think the mirrored version really tries to camouflage so that it’s not disruptive to others and also mirrors some of the green space that’s surrounding you. This is a very successful submission.
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Voting ends September 24th – one vote per person.
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