Mobile Porch is a mobile mini-architecture designed for roaming the public sphere. It is an urban toy used to engage on a one to one level with the users and governing bodies of public sites. The observations and experiences collected during on-site residencies are a valuable source of information in regard to the state and potential of everyday situations and future policies/strategies. Mobile Porch was developed for the North Kensington Amenity Trust to roam its public domain. Everyone was invited to use it, to shape it, to mould it, and to temporarily own it.

The flexible design allows it to be transformed into a stage, a screen, a reception desk, a dinner table, a shop, an exhibition board, a workshop, a billboard, a hang-out… the possibilities are endless.

By using this physical tool to examine the existing non-physical aspects in public spaces (such as lack of play space or platform for expression), we develop new ideas for the use of the neighbouring space.

The playfulness of Mobile Porch works on an one to one scale, allowing its users to express their ideas concerning public space through direct action and participation. What do people come up with when given a flexible space to play with?

The Mobile Porch has travelled widely and has been deployed in a large number of porjects and situations:

WmK Mobil/Mobile Porch
Messestadt Riem, Munich
As part of kunstprojekte_riem
Commissioned by Claudia Büttner
May - Aug 2001
Kathrin Böhm, Stefan Saffer,
In collaboration with Dorothee Orgzewalla

Mobile Porch was transported to a new neighbourhood development on the former airport site in Munich to assist the new families and ‘first-time-buyers’ in their interior design dilemmas.
Messesatdt Riem consists of young families with a first mortgage who are naturally interested in interior design. Roaming the public space with Mobile Porch and meeting people on their streets, a free interior design consultancy for their private living rooms was offered. Talks and chats with residents led to invitations into these private homes where the ‘design-problem’ or ‘interior-question’ was identified and the consultancy begun. On the basis of very individual ‘design briefings’, small-scale proposals for new solutions were developed. These were based on an artistic approach and made references to contemporary art. Each proposal was outlined as an informal drawing to enable a collaborative thought process with the ‘customer’. Rather than patronise residents, the consultation offered new possibilities, leaving the final design to the homeowners them-selves.
The process aimed to open up the hidden conventional borders of the public, the private and the institutional sphere by using the practice of art and architecture as a tool and injecting some colour, sparkle and imagination into everyday living.

Mobile Porch in West Bromwich
as part of Platforms, curated by Mark Beasley
for Jubilee Arts West Bromwich
June – September 2002
Kathrin Böhm, Andreas Lang, Stefan Saffer

Mobile Porch traveled to West Bromwich to be used and activated by Jubilee Arts as part of a running-up program towards the commission of a new cultural centre in the town. It roamed the area between the metro station and the central pedestrian zone. The nature of Mobile Porch presented an ideal tool for this situation, as it promotes the idea of public space as a common ground, as a communal place – a vital alternative to private and commercial territory. It also represents the other or unfamiliar: a strange looking object, offering a new service. This referred neatly to the proposed cultural center. Mobile Porch entered West Bromwich as a visiting probe, before the landing of the big spaceship.

Mobile Porch in NL
Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, NL
As part of Parasite Paradise
Commissioned by SKOR, NL
August/September 2003
Kathrin Böhm, Andreas Lang, Stefan Saffer

Parasite Paradise was an open air exhibition of mobile architecture in the Leische Rijn area near Utrecht, on of the largest dutch residential developments. The mobile structure were arranged as a kind of small village, where they took on different functions, such as a kitchen, hotel, farm,etc. The Mobile Porch got used as a board for new public announcements and a stage for small scale events.

Mobile Porch in Sevilla
As part of Ambulantes
Center for Contemporary Andalusian Art CAAC, Sevilla, Spain
Curated by Rosa Pera
May – August 2003
Kathrin Böhm, Andreas Lang, Stefan Saffer

As part of Ambulantes the Porch has been used as a site for publishing a street magazine, as a site for workshops at the Centre for Contemporary Andalusian Art.
The premise of the whole exhibition was to bring together historical and current mobile art projects and their perticula programme.