Post Comfort
The Rooms
[Through a fishbowl lens]
Winter 2025
MDF, Woodworking, Hand Modeling Group Project
Ryan Ball
Time has always been defined by Earth’s natural rhythms, sunrises and sunsets, the changing seasons, and the changing tides. Before artificial constructs, time followed nature’s cycles, governing animal migration, plant blooming, and human activities. Over time, humans imposed structures on time to fit industrial needs, severing routines from natural rhythms and creating systems to override daylight’s constraints. This detachment led to a world where consumption dictates time. Yet, time remains beyond human control. Disrupting natural cycles through overconsumption leads to environmental collapse, reminding us that we cannot manipulate time without consequence.
In our proposed reality, people have started aligning their lives with solar time and natures cyclical systems, abandoning digital dependencies for analog technologies that harness light and water. By embracing solar rhythms and water cycles, they foster sustainable living and reconnect with Earth’s cycles, not as a regression, but a reintegration of nature into human systems, rediscovering a world where time belongs to nature.
As an example of how one can work with natural systems, we created an abstraction of a house where rooms and solar tubes are positioned in accordance with the position of the sun, aligning the house with solar time. The house utilizes four fixed solar tubes, which light up rooms at certain times of the day. An angled solar tube on the east side of the bedroom lights up the room to wake up the inhabitant in the morning. The three other fixed solar tubes are aligned with spaces of energy consumption, the kitchen and office, and aim to allow usage of these spaces while encouraging consciousness of consumption.
There is one “flexible” solar tube, running from the top of the house to the lower floor, providing a light that can be moved from room to room at any time of the day, yet is only usable in one room at a time. The flexible tube is used on the first floor to light spaces that do not align directly with the daily cycle of light but rather to encourage thoughtful usage not aligned with strict routine.
The Period Room
Along with this, the house functions using rainwater collected in a reservoir, filtered, pumped, and recycled. This water is also set on a timer using the natural collection of rainwater as well as the gravity of a tipping bucket in order to limit the amount of water that can cycle through the house at one time.
