Hasta La Ideas

This mobile home by Chinese studio dot Architects consists of a quilted cube attached to the back of a tricycle.

At first glance the facade could be mistaken for padded fabric, but the two-metre-wide structure is actually made from spray polyurethane foam (SPF), which dot Architects injected into a timber and fabric mould held together with pins and string.

“SPF is normally concealed behind the finishing surface and functions only as supplementary material,” explains principal designer Ning Duo. “Bao House tries to explore this common material and reinterpret it in a new fabrication system.”

The foam expanded as it set, so that when the moulds were removed they revealed a bulbous lightweight structure that is both water-resistant and thermally insulated.

“Bao House gets its name from this bubble-like surface, since ‘bao’ in Chinese means bulge,” says Duo.

The architects created the structure for Get It Louder 2012, an exhibition of visual art and design at the Sanlitun Village shopping centre in Beijing, after being asked to design a mobile living space that is human-powered.

A roof of transparent polycarbonate lets light inside the shelter, where a mattress covers the floor to allow enough sleeping space for up to three people.

There’s no door, but one of the walls slides open to let residents climb in.

We’ve featured a few mobile homes on Dezeen, including a refuge in the Alps and a tiny floating house.

See more mobile architecture, including a masterplan of buildings on railway tracks and a hotel room you can have delivered.

Photography is by Yuming Baia and Vanessa Chen.

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dot Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

As the tides erode the northern coast of New Zealand, this house on a sled by architects Crosson Clarke Carnachan can be towed off the beach and out of harm’s way (+ slideshow).

Located within a designated erosion zone on the Coromandel Peninsula, the house was designed as a mobile structure to satisfy a planning condition requiring that all buildings in the area be removable.

A huge shutter folds up across the exterior to reveal and shade a two-storey glazed facade, which has an open-plan living room and mezzanine bedroom behind.

More shutters lift up to uncover windows on each side of the house, and a roof deck is hidden behind the parapet walls.

A family of five use the hut as a holiday home and the three children sleep in a three-tiered bunk bed in the back room.

Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects also recently completed a charred wooden cabin – take a look at it here.

Surprisingly this isn’t the first building on a sled we’ve featured. The first was a sauna on a Finnish island.

See all our stories about mobile architecture »

Photography is by Jackie Meiring.

Here’s a description from Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects:

On the shore of an idyllic white sandy beach on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula rests an elegant hut. The site lies within the coastal erosion zone, where all building must be removable. This is taken literally and the hut is designed on two thick wooden sleds for movement back up the site or across the beach and onto a barge.

The hut is a series of simple design moves. The aesthetic is natural and reminiscent of a beach artifact/perhaps a surf-life-saving or observation tower. The fittings and mechanics are industrial and obvious, the structure is gutsy and exposed.

The holiday retreat is designed to close up against the elements when not in use, and measures a mere 40 square meters. It accommodates a family of five in a kitchen/dining/living area, a bathroom and two sleeping zones, the children’s accommodating a three tiered bunk.

Closed up, the rough macrocarpa cladding blends into the landscape and perches unobtrusively on the dunes. The rear being clad in “flat sheet” a cheap building material found in many traditional New Zealand holiday homes.

These clients sought to explore the real essence of holiday living; small, simple, functional. The normal rituals of daily life; cooking dining, sleeping and showering all being done connected to the outside.

The two storey shutter on the front facade winches open to form an awning, shading the interior from summer sun while allowing winter sun to enter. It reveals a double height steel framed glass doors that open the interior much like the tent flap, connecting the living and the ladder accessed mezzanine bedroom to the extraordinary view.

Within, the interior is the epitome of efficiency, every available space is utilised from cabinetry toe spaces to secret cubby holes within the children’s bunks.

The hut is totally sustainable from its modest size to the use of timber in its cladding, structure, lining and joinery and from its worm tank waste system to the separate portable grey water tanks. This is a new way of looking at holiday living in this sensitive dune environment.

Engineering: CMR Engineers Ltd
Contractor: D.F. Wight Builders Ltd
Completed: 2011
Area: 48.8m2

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Carnachan Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

A mobile theatre will visit Clerkenwell Design Week in London this May, inspired by a miniature concert hall above a coal-shed that used to be in the area in the seventeenth century.

Designed by London studio Aberrant Architecture, the Tiny Travelling Theatre will draw on contemporary accounts to replicate some of the attributes of the original coal shed, which was home to Clerkenwell resident and coal salesman Thomas Britton. He lived above his coal shed and started putting on a music club with a harpsichord and organ in 1678.

Design fair Clerkenwell Design Week will take place from 22 to 24 May. See all our stories from last year’s event here.

Here’s some more explanation from Aberrant Architecture:

“The SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre”

The original site of the medieval well, from which Clerkenwell derives its name, is located on the northern edge of Clerkenwell Green. Notoriously, this marks the spot where mystery plays, wrestling matches, radical performances and other “dramatic representations” of a secretive nature have regularly occurred for centuries.

Indeed it is claimed that “the secret life of Clerkenwell, like its well, goes very deep. Many of its inhabitants seem to have imbibed the quixotic and fevered atmosphere of the area” and consequently strange existences have been allowed to flourish.

Thomas Britton

“Perhaps the most curious and notable resident of Clerkenwell was Thomas Britton, who was known everywhere as “the musical small-coal man”. Britton was a travelling coal salesman, who lived above his coal shed, and in 1678 he founded a musical club, The SMALL-COAL-MAN’S Musick Club, by transforming his house into a tiny concert hall which featured a harpsichord & organ.

Despite the unglamorous “hovel-esque” venue, accessible only by a steep external staircase, the relative novelty of the series of concerts attracted a considerable audience from across all sectors of society. A wide range of artists came to play at Britton‟s house, from amateurs giving their first ever public performances to micro concerts from all the great musicians of the day, even the great George Frideric Handel. Britton designed his own programmes and “amassed a large music collection and selection of musical instruments for the gatherings.” At first the concerts were free, with coffee being sold at a penny a cup. Later concerts where paid for by an annual subscription of ten shillings.

Tiny Travelling Theatre

For Clerkenwell design week we propose to reawaken Britton’s maverick idea of a miniature concert hall for Clerkenwell and reimagine it as a tiny travelling theatre. Our new “SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre” will occupy multiple locations around the area and will host a series of events that revive & explore the intense emotion of a micro live performance. Inspired by small one-to-one spaces, such as a confessional booth or a peepshow, the “SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre” will create a direct and intimate interaction of artists with a minute audience of 2- 6 people.

Like Britton’s eccentric original we imagine that the program of events will be a mixture of unknowns making their debuts and established “stars”. Visually the tiny travelling theatre will be an explorative structure taking its cues from the ad-hoc & informal descriptions of the original with its “henhouse ladder”, interior “not much higher than a canary-pipe” and window “but very little bigger than the Bung-hole of a Cask”.