Welcome to The New World of ...

The Ultimate Experience!

® AGRAL SA, Rte de Lausanne 167, CH-1096 Cully /SWITZERLAND represents the sole owners of the

Baldakin Registered Trademark and of the Copyrights and (Pending) Patents Protection of the BMAS.

If you are interested in boats and Cruises, may we suggest hat you go straight to the application

If you are more interested in the construction of camps, motels and hotels, floating or not, you better visit the concerned applications...

May we suggest you to visit our website

"IdeasToShare"

where you will find other ideas/projects we may offer you to share...

In case of interest for this project and site, you are welcome to send us an E-mail with your interest, critics, suggestions, etc. or to recommend this site to your friends...

[Baldakin Home] [Introduction to the Baldakin Concept] [Summary] [Résumé] [Contact us] [Table of Contents, Site Map & Search] [Printable documents]

The Baldakin

Modular Accommodation System (BMAS)

Concept

Introduction: How it all started…

It probably all started in our Mother’s womb,…

…Where we felt secure, in the dark, with all external sounds attenuated, like “immersed” in a cosy pre-life environment…

More seriously, it all started with the problem of noise pollution…

Have you ever dreamt of a place, where you could take a short nap, read, meditate or simply relax, without being disturbed by outside noises?

Obviously, this can be achieved by designing a kind of a closable “box”, using adequate acoustic soundproofing materials and insulated from the ground by silent-blocks…

If it is soundproofed, couldn’t you use that same “box” to listen to the music of your choice, be it an opera or techno at full throttle (specially that modern rhythmic bass), without disturbing your family or neighbours?

Why then not add video, and a tactile sound transducer to make this a good place to play and feel DVDs and videogames?

By the way, couldn’t that same “box” be used also as a bedroom, to sleep, for a short siesta or even the whole night?

To sleep you need a bed, which you can also convert as a relaxing couch or even a chair when you are not sleeping, especially if you wish to play games or watch a video.

This means that our “box” should be able to accommodate at least two persons, which requires two beds, which can be made into a double bed in case these two persons are a couple.

Why not then use our “box” as your bedroom?

But, what about claustrophobia?

Did our ancestors suffer from it when they were sleeping in a canopied four poster bed (“lit à baldaquin”) or box bed (“lit clot”)?

Isn’t it natural for man (like many animals who sleep in a nest or a den) to sleep in a cosy, enclosed bed, otherwise eventually set in an alcove/recess?

This brought other considerations…

The first one is that the “modern” man is actually already accustomed to spend a large part of his life in exiguous spaces like the cabin of a commercial (or even a business) jet, his automobile, a sleeper in a train wagon, the cabin of his truck, or of a sailing boat, a tent, a caravan or a camping car, not to speak of the “capsules” of a Japanese city “hotels”…

The above examples show that an exiguous living space is by no means systematically associated with “cheap”.

An even better example of the opposite is that of the exiguous living space the astronauts share in the cabin of a space capsule or aboard a space shuttle or station…

Doesn’t this mean that our “box”, even if exiguous, could be made attractive as a bedroom, especially if it does not try to look like one but appears designed specifically for a purpose, like a space capsule…?

Another consideration is that people usually do not spend a lot of their time in their bedroom, except when using the bed to sleep, to read a book, to watch TV or to perform other activities.

Furthermore, people who stay, even temporarily, in groups, like guests in a hotel or students sharing a flat, are all too happy to share the living and dining rooms, the study/meeting rooms, the kitchen, the bar, the swimming pool & fitness/spa, the cellar, the laundry, eventually the “Home cinema”, etc… but not the toilets nor the bathroom, nor of course their bedroom, which we will call hereafter the “private quarters” (in opposition to the a/m “shared facilities”).

If these private quarters could be housed skilfully in our “box”, with a bed really convertible to a chair, couldn’t they become an attractive alternative to the traditional bedroom, at least for collective housing facilities, such as a hotel, a student housing project, a base camp, an offshore platform, a cruise ship, a ferryboat, etc…?

In other words, if we could indeed design individual private quarters which are small yet attractive, couldn’t they be offered at a low enough price to induce people to consider changing their “sleeping” requirements?

What about economical considerations then?

First of all, we live in a world where living space is more and more scarce and therefore expensive.

Small private quarters mean not only saving space and therefore on capital investment per “guest” but also cheaper heating/cooling and cleaning and other maintenance costs.

Even more important, by designing small, integrated private quarters, wouldn’t it be possible to industrialize their production, i.e. to achieve the same kind of quality and savings achieved with the industrial production, for example of caravans?

The Baldakin Concept is the result of all these considerations…

By the way, Why “Baldakin”?

“Baldakin” is the modern version of the antique “Baldaquin”, which consisted of a structure in form of a canopy, supported by pillars, placed over the bed of an important person. The Baldaquin bed could be fully enclosed, to ensure privacy, by means of rich embroidered curtains attached to it…

Previous Top Next

[Baldakin Home]

This site has been designed by , is hosted by and is a member of

Please click on one of the above Logos if you want to know more about the service...