Most tiny homes solve for smallness, but this Camping House solves for leaving.
Camping House tows behind a car, and when you get where you’re going, it opens like a tent. Not a flimsy-tent. A tent in the sense that it’s engineered to fan open, lock into place, and then hold up through a winter.
It’s a concept from Atelier Lune, the studio run by architect Na Shen, and it’s built from three modules the studio calls Ports. The Residential Port is living and sleeping, with furniture that flips from one to the other.
The Utility Port has a kitchen and a bathroom, both real ones. The Extended Port clips on when you want a desk or space for guests. You park, stabilize it, release the hinges, and the shell swings open.
Then there’s the part where it leaves. No foundations, barely any grading, anchors that come back out of the ground. Solar on the roof, batteries underneath, rainwater collection, and a solar chimney flap that pulls hot air up and out. The frame is recyclable aluminum, the insulation is bio-based, and the fabric membranes are designed to be patched instead of replaced.
Deep eaves shade it through summer. High-R panels and airtight gaskets get it through winter, which is the season most portable housing simply can’t handle.
The use we’d most like to see is disaster housing. Shen pictures fleets of these going out after a wildfire or a flood, then coming back once recovery is done. What makes that different from a trailer in a lot is that people get a door that closes, a kitchen they can cook in, and a bathroom of their own.
Shen worked at Gensler, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Ateliers Jean Nouvel before starting Atelier Lune, which goes some way toward explaining why the folding sequence looks choreographed rather than improvised. We’d like to watch one open in person.
“Camping House is a road-towable micro-home that unfolds like a tent and lives like architecture. Three attachable “Ports” make the system:
(1) Residential Port with transformable living/sleeping, (2) Utility Port with kitchen and restroom, and (3) Extended Port that clips on for workspace, gear, or guests.
Arrive by car, stabilize, release the hinges, and the shell fans open; furniture flips from day to night in seconds. Designed for year-round forests, deserts, or coasts, Camping House leaves a light footprint, runs off-grid, and folds back up when you go—enabling remote work, seasonal migration, disaster relief, and low-impact eco-tourism.“
Note: This is purely a design concept at this time, and not available for purchase or pre-sale.
More in this vein: a 190 square foot zen retreat in the Oregon forest, a modular tiny house shaped like a tree trunk, and fifteen unusual home types from around the world.
Camping House by Atelier Lune. Images by Na Shen and Haohao Mao, via v2com.
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2 Comments
Never a mention of costs, nor what size vehicle to haul this around. Plus (aesthetics) the house is a little too zen. No pictures on walls. No vases with flowers, nor personal touches that makes a bunch of metal and wood home. Geometry and efficiency are not always best.
No fricking way you could actually build this and have it towable by one car.