Are we there yet?

One of my recurring obsessions is with the division between public and private space and the mindset shift as one moves from one to the other. Sitting at home in your bedroom reading a book is different from sitting in a laundromat reading a book, or even sitting in the lobby of a hotel reading a book. Even if you have a comfortable chair and the temperature is just proper, you're visible. You aren't alone, even if you're the only one there.

Another idea I can't seem to divest myself of is the perceptions of retail space installations. I've worked in retail, and seen the shitty plywood/cheapest-ass carpet assemblies that serve as platforms for mannequins to stand on, and yet, they look a little magical when I'm wandering through the aisles, contemplating how to get the mannequin out to my car without being caught (there was one in particular that I would've paid big money for, just because it had a facial expression that messed with my brain every time I passed by on my way to the stationery aisle).

So, I read all the related links to this story of a group of artists that covertly built an apartment in a shopping mall in Providence. Actually, I read a bit of the original article last night, then left it when I was called to the other room. I woke three times during the night, convinced that I had some deep memory of a similar meme. Then, I recalled that William Gibson had a bit in one of his novels about people building makeshift homes in Tokyo train stations, or something similar. Every notion I've had for a science-fiction plot line turns out to have already been covered in one of his stories already. I would suggest that explaining the mechanism by which this coincidence occurred might be a suitable concept to base a story on, but I'm sure his next manuscript already has it penciled in the margins (he writes on an old manual typewriter, you know).

4 October 2007 9:43 AM
UPDATE:
I almost forgot this bit. BLDGBLOG had a mention of the A.I.R. unit, which is a lightweight "deployable condo unit." I could easily see something like this being covertly stuck to the back corner of a strip mall, or a few of them being placed together to form a community on some interstitial bit of land, the kind of place where exact ownership of that spot is not easily determined, and maybe not interesting to anyone else. The diagrams look a bit luxurious for my ideas, but something along these lines, discretely attached to the back of a bus station, Shoney's, or interstate rest area, would be as cool as the club house in the mall garage loft.