This aspect covers the most literal interpretation of mobile architecture. The idea of moving buildings has been quite prominent in fiction, with images of flying buildings, walking castles and floating cities.
Picture above is the flying "utopian" city of Columbia from Bioshock: Infinite. Each group of building are supported by propellers or balloons, allowing the city to change shape and layout at a whim.
The wandering structure featured in Howl's Moving Castle is an example (though not a particularly realistic one) of land based architectural mobility.
And these concepts can become fair more chaotic and cluster as more and more systems and buildings are added to the design.
An example of a moving city by Josh Dykgraaf. More examples of these can be found at
This popularity for moving buildings is because a home that can move would allow the owner to explore new area's and move whenever they feel like, while still living in comfort and security. The most common form of this type of mobile architect is water based “buildings”. At the lower end of the scale is house boats but newer conceptual designs expand this concept to large residential complexes and all the way to small cities.
The mobile architectural solution could be made smaller by adding a “home base” for them to stock up on what they need for specific jobs instead of having to carry around everything just in case. The home base could also be mobile but it wouldn't require the same level of mobility as the smaller units as they could reach where it could not. This system could help multiple areas simultaneously increasing the efficiency of this problem solving device.
The three main forms of transport are by air, by water and by land. Travel by air is the least restricted out of the three but is conversely the most expensive in terms of cost, energy usage and upkeep. The best option for keeping the structure afloat would be a dirigible based system. However the load of the structure would have to be balanced with quite large lighter-than-air balloons. Gliding is a low energy cost method of air transport as they rely on natural thermal currents for lift but these units will have to be small and light. This method of travel could be used for the smaller structures in the home base system described above as they will not be required to travel very far by their own power.
Mobility by sea is obviously quite restricted in where it can go by the depth (and availability) of water. However, very little additional infrastructure would be required to service the available communities because if they live near a body of water that connects to the ocean then most likely have a dock in place. For the purpose of this assignment however, our architectural solution would be primarily operating around Canberra, which lacks access water based transport.
The last and most common form of mobility is transport by land. Because of the boom of automobile, roads and other land based transport infrastructure are prevalent. Most of the communities around Australia (including the far out rural zones) are connected to the road or rail network making most areas accessible. Land mobility technology includes wheels, treads, legs and rail.
Wheels would be the most reliable and would be able to use the existing infrastructure the best. However they rely on road quality and have troubles in rough terrain (such as in rural zones). Treads are slower but better on less even terrain as the distribution of weight to the ground is over a larger area. Legs are operate on most terrain and can negotiate very uneven ground but a legged structure would be extremely slow, which might not suit the spread out nature of Australian communities. Rail is extremely limited to where the tracks are but are the fastest option. Because our idea involves creating a new railway to connect the capital to Sydney and Melbourne this solution quite viable.
A another area of mobility exists between aquatic and land transport, the hovercraft.
The hovercraft can easily travel of most terrain providing it is mostly flat and the craft itself can get quite large, to carry a large amount of cargo. This versatility in movement doesn't sacrifice speed and at tops speeds, they can travel faster than a car or truck. It can also move between water and land without the need to stop or modify the structure. However it consumes a large amount of fuel to run.
These form of mobility can be combined with the previous form of moving designs to make a moving structure that can use local materials to fabricate non-permanent or low impact housing.
It can use the dirt to make mud bricks, or sand to create sandstone, or even trees to create wooden structures (thought the environmental impact must be managed/offset). While it won't be as quick and basic as shown above, it is an idea that warrants further thought.
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