If you're designing futuristic aircraft, it helps
if your research lab looks like one, too. Dutch designers Frank Havermans and Ronald Rietveld
created this mobile studio to tread the runway of a former Royal
Netherlands Air Force base near Utrecht. "We started by analysing the F-15
fighter jet,"
says Havermans. "We decided to bring back a new, mean-looking vehicle in
the shelter, based not on war and speed, but on inertia and research."
The dimensions of the vehicle, called Secret
Operation 610, are based on the hangar that used to house F-15s: it stands 4.5
metres tall, 11 metres wide and eight metres long. The people occupying the
lab, aerospace engineering researchers from Delft University of Technology, are
trying to create something less fearsome: a green aircraft called CleanEra. The
ten seats inside the lab are reconfigurable and a table descends from the
ceiling, making the space adaptable for other research needs.
"The combination of nature and Cold War
history offers an environment for the development of knowledge about nature,
technology and aviation," says Rietveld. Secret Operation 610 is just the
first iteration: the pair are "colonising the whole airbase" with
other mobile
labs.
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