The humble cabin occupies a unique place in the architectural imagination. As a temporary home, it allows for flights of visual fancy that might pall if experienced on a daily basis. A light footprint makes it ideal for integrating into wildernesses and alongside spectacular views.
Working on a small scale also makes it the perfect technology test bed, an experimental zone for ideas such as prefabrication and miniaturisation. On the other hand, cabins also have desirable dimensions for working with traditional methods and materials, signalling a return to craft and human scale. And, given architecture’s often wayward economics, they offer a realistic choice between indulgence and austerity. No one begrudges a simple hut if the location is right, yet at the same time the intimacy of cabin life gives craftspeople a showcase for the finest details and finishes.
The examples below are WIRED in style, yet range in construction from wood and nails through to CNC-milled surfaces. What they all have in common is the desire to bring the outside in, transcending four walls in favour of the stars and surrounding landscapes. Above everything else, they provide a direct injection of the twin pipe dreams – escape and elegance – that underpin modern life. These are the retreats we run to in our minds, accompanied by fantasies of downsizing, decluttering and decompressing.
The 7th Room
Housed in an established architectural arboretum, The Treehotel is a crop of elegant cabins slung between the pines in a resort near Harads in the far north of Sweden. Its latest addition, The 7th Room, is a five-person retreat supported by 12 slender columns. The structure was designed by one of Norway’s best-known architecture firms, Snøhetta, in accordance with traditional local methods. That means timber framing with a pitched roof, a burnt-pine exterior and light birch ply throughout the airy interior, with custom-designed lighting created in collaboration with Swedish company ateljé Lykta. Treehotel residents can recline on a netting deck slung across the central space, allowing stargazers and aurora borealis spotters to make the most of the nocturnal lightshow.
Vipp Shelter
Founded in 1939, Danish industrial design specialist Vipp began life making pedal bins. Today it has a reputation for cabins as well as products. In 2014, the company launched the Shelter, 22 tonnes of prefabricated steel and wood shaped into a two-person home. Intended as an off-the-shelf solution for the long-standing tradition of Scandinavian weekend retreats, the Shelter is a seamless, tank-like structure evoking industrial components. The aim here is for relaxation, with all the heavy lifting done by Vipp’s team of in-house designers led by Morten Bo Jensen. Eschewing the folksy stylings of the red-boarded Danish vernacular in favour of matt-black walls, slender steel fittings and huge sliding panes of glass, the cabin is available to order, although the company maintains its own example to give a lucky few the ultimate sleepover.
Grotto Sauna
This solid chunk of Canadian craftsmanship conceals its digital origins behind a charred cedar façade, prepared using wood preserved using the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban weathering process. Built almost entirely off-site before being shipped and craned to a private island retreat in Ontario’s Georgian Bay, Partisan Projects’ Grotto Sauna was digitally crafted down to the millimetre. A laser-scanned site survey determined the best way of fastening the building to the rocky shore and securing the optimum sunset view into the bargain. Inside is a riot of woody curves, with windows, a skylight, benches, stove and storage all part of a precisely machined surface of sinuous flowing wooden panels. The design was inspired by the faux natural stylings of an Italian grotto, yet is tough enough to cope with Lake Huron’s climatic demands. It’s a modern interpretation of a timeless geological landscape: a warm, glowing space that appears to sit right on the surface of the water.
Micro House
Vermont-based architecture firm Elizabeth Herrmann usually specialises in large-scale rural houses that flit effortlessly between shingle-sided elegance and bold, boxy modernism. The studio’s recent Micro House, however, devotes the same level of detail to a structure a fraction of its usual scale. This is micro-living, American style, with no loss of creature comforts or amenities. Despite only taking up 40 square metres above ground, the house – designed with artists in mind – is a mono-pitched structure of simplicity, with thoughtfully placed windows and openings giving the interior the airiness of a larger space while framing the distant Green Mountains with mathematical precision. Splashes of colour are matched with birch, maple and cedar. It helps, too, to have a basement level for storage, so the project doesn’t so much sit lightly on its site as become one with the verdant landscape.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
