The Warming Hive: Building Community, One Inflation at a Time

Is it possible for an architectural space that can be used by anyone, to happen anywhere, anytime? This paper explores how pneumatic (a.k.a. inflatable) architecture can be deployed to address social resilience on a multiplicity of levels. The focus is on The Warming Hive—a recently completed pneumatic enclosure designed by architecture students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. By actualizing a temporary installation, which could then be deployed in different locations for a variety of year-round uses, students demonstrated the capacity for air-supported structures to generate social resilience by catering to a wide-array of site conditions and programmatic demands.