Not far from the hustle and bustle of Farmers Park in Springfield, Missouri, the Cloud House is a getaway spot where anyone can sit and enjoy a few moments of peace and relaxation as you listen to the (somewhat simulated) sound of a gentle rain, as if you were sitting on the porch of a rural farm away from it all. 

Designer Matthew Mazzotta developed the idea for the Cloud House during a two-month artist residency at Farmers Park. Mazzotta and his project team built the house from reclaimed barnwood and tin obtained from a nearby abandoned Amish farm, and its gutter system is modeled after the natural water cycle. During rainy days, the house collects rainwater as it hits the tin roof and into the storage tank underneath. 

Diagram via Matthew Mazzotta.

Sitting in the rocking chairs inside the house triggers a pump that brings the rainwater up into the cloud, which will then release the water onto the tin roof and produce that pleasant pitter-pattering sound of rain hitting the roof.

The rainwater will also trickle down from the tops of the windows and onto the edible plants growing in the windowsills. Mazzotta designed the Cloud House with a familiar environmental message in mind: How much of our food production, with its many unsustainable practices, largely depends on Earth's natural systems like the water cycle. When there is low rainfall, the cloud won't release rain simply because there is not enough water.

“This display of the water cycle illustrates our dependence on the fragile natural systems that grow the food we eat,” Mazzotta says. “The changing climate has brought a new threat of increased instability to our food systems by creating unpredictable weather patterns, which we are seeing [with more droughts and floods in various locations]...It is becoming increasingly important that we have a clear understanding of how closely we are tied to ecological systems.”

All photos by Tim Hawley.

See the Cloud House in action in the video below.