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Emergency Response Studio, by Paul Villinski, is a solar-powered, mobile artist's studio, re-purposed from a salvaged FEMA-style trailer. This sustainably re-built, off-the-grid living and work space is designed to enable artists to "embed" in post-disaster settings, and respond and contribute creatively. Villinski conceived the project in response to the devastation of post-Katrina New Orleans as "a symbol of transformation and possibility for the communities of the Gulf Coast."

Minimizing the structure's carbon footprint and enhancing quality of life for its inhabitants, ERS has been reconstructed with sustainable, green materials like recycled denim insulation, zero-VOC paints, bamboo cabinetry, compact fluorescent lighting, reclaimed wood and floor tiles made from linseed oil. Though designed as an artist's studio, the Emergency Response Studio also serves as a prototype for self-sufficient, solar-powered mobile housing, and explores the application of sustainable materials in the construction of trailers and other forms of temporary housing.

more after the jump.

The project playfully and purposefully deconstructs the template of the now iconic FEMA trailer. Villinski gutted a 30-foot Gulfstream "Cavalier", removing materials known to off-gas formaldehyde, and rebuilt it with "clean tech" solutions. The studio is entirely powered by a 1.6 kilowatt photo-voltaic solar system featuring an array of nine large solar panels which tilt upward from the trailer's roof to face the sun. Additional power comes from a micro-wind turbine spinning atop a 40-foot high aluminum mast. Eight large batteries, each weighing as much as an average man, store this power and are seen underfoot through a clear Lucite floor section as one steps into the trailer.

A large wall section cranks down to become a deck, a ten-foot, geodesic skylight provides daylight and expansive headroom in the work area, and a thirteen-foot wall section has shed its aluminum siding in favor of clear polycarbonate sheathing. With the Emergency Response Studio, the artist suggests that inventive, non-traditional thinking practiced by visual artists can be a valuable part of the mix as we attempt to heal what is damaged and confront imminent challenges of all sorts.

ERS will be exhibited in Prospect .1 New Orleans, (whose home page was kind of tweaking when we posted this) the largest exhibition of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States, which opens throughout the Cresent City November first, 2008.