An object that is pure geometry, a sphere. Many objects are spherical or quasi-spherical; very few are inhabitable spheres. In 1970, a duo of rebellious Austrian architects under the name of Coop Himmelblau, created Restless Ball. They defined it as an inflated vinyl bubble for the activities of multiple people. The idea of the mini-environment as a bridge between building and object, between architecture and design, was a staple of the productive sixties (in design, the sixties were really from mid-60s to mid-70s). Proposals for pneumatic objects, environments, buildings and even cities were then the new face of radical design in Europe. As object, a transparent inhabitable sphere 5 meters in diameter sounds more playful than revolutionary: the proof is that in 1998, some clever guy named Charles Jones simply knocked-off the idea, renamed it Waterball, and claimed that he had invented it just for fun. Fun might have been a factor in Coop Himmelblau’s first projects, but Restless Ball was about more than fun. It was an experiment on active participation, an object designed to foster human interaction. It was also about a new form of mobility: collective, human-powered mobility. Unlike the bicycle, the skateboard or the Sedgway, for example, all of them designed for individual use, Restless Ball was multi-propelled. It was also multi-functional: a vehicle; an environment; a prop for happenings and group events; a test for the (back then) new technology of pneumatic structures, and an exercise in design with new materials.
