Story

A L B E R T O F R I A S

Pod Designer

Alberto Frias is the architect and creator of the first: pod bed, meditation pod and sensory pod for children with autism. Since the company's inception in 2002, the pods continue to inspire and help people across the world. The pods can be found in homes, businesses, galleries, hospitals, clinics and spas. The pods have been featured in numerous global exhibits, TV shows and movies, ie. MEN in BLACK 3.  

THE GOODS

Curl Up and Transcend

By Brendan I. Koerner

March 25, 2007

EPIPHANIES are tough to summarize in words, and Alberto Frias’s spiritual revelation in the New Mexican desert is no exception.

“I kind of sat down and meditated, and the sun was shining on me, and I was immersed in the light,” said Mr. Frias, a Las Vegas architect, recalling a day in 2002. “And I had this feeling of expansiveness, of being in the present moment — a trancelike state.”

Anyone wishing to approximate Mr. Frias’s meditative high can buy the Transport, an egg-shaped fiberglass vessel outfitted with speakers and an array of light-emitting diodes. Mr. Frias, its designer, described it as a “perceptual pod.”

Those who are not on a higher astral plane might say that the Transport is akin to a miniature planetarium. Lying supine on the product’s central cushion, a user is surrounded by flickering bright lights synchronized to music, a show intended to encourage oneness with the cosmos, or something like that.

The Transport began as Mr. Frias’s thesis project at the University of New Mexico, where he earned a master’s degree in architecture in 2003.

“I thought of getting a trailer and filling it with lights,” he said. “But, cost-wise, it was too much for a thesis project. So I thought, why not bring it down to scale?”

Taking his inspiration from the shape of the human eye, Mr. Frias decided that an elliptical vessel would work best. He hired a fiberglass company in Arizona to make three domes — two identically sized, one slightly smaller.

Mr. Frias bolted together the two larger domes, then placed the third inside, concave side facing upward. In the inside shell, he layered two subwoofer speakers, a plywood board, a waterbed pad and a cushion.

Satellite speakers were placed on either end of the cushion, and banks of L.E.D. lights were concealed in the gaps between the inner and outer domes. Mr. Frias programmed the Transport’s dancing lights with his laptop.

At first, he wanted the Transport to open and close like a clam, but he quickly dismissed that approach as too complicated. He instead used a jigsaw to cut a small opening in the top dome for a user to crawl into the space.

After his thesis was accepted and he received his architecture degree, Mr. Frias moved to Las Vegas to start his career. The Transport became a side project, on which he tinkered during nights and weekends.

Over the years, he replaced the vessel’s metal base with a layer of foam to enhance the sound; he also moved the satellite speakers to the Transport’s bottom, alongside the L.E.D.’s. In a nod to what he expects will be an ecoconscious market for the pod, he switched construction adhesives, from a petroleum-based resin to one made from soybeans.

Mr. Frias increased the brightness of the Transport’s lights by 30 percent, using new L.E.D.’s from Color Kinetics, a Boston lighting systems company. A Florida couple bought the first Transport late last year for $12,000. Mr. Frias says that prices will vary, according to how many lights are included, but that a base model is available for around $10,000 through his Web site, AlbertoFrias.com. The pod will also be shown at the CA Boom 4 design show, which begins on Fridayin Santa Monica, Calif.

Mr. Frias says he believes that hotels and spas will be his primary customers, especially those in Las Vegas. Many of that city’s visitors come to sin, of course, but some may enjoy a moment of L.E.D.-enhanced inner peace between drunken games of blackjack.