rucksack house main

So you are stuck in the middle of the building – not on the top, where you might build up, or on the bottom, where you could sprawl out. Your unit faces out in only one direction. There is nowhere else to go.

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backpack house

Stefan Eberstadt claims otherwise, with his Backpack House project that has now hung from the sides of multiple residential structures to expand occupiable space. It’s basically a hanging room – a portable building addition strung from wires that you enter from the existing building via a window.

floating hanging building addition

The idea comes as a response to cramped quarters the artist/builder has experienced in major cities including London and New York, where at times you are limited to as little as one outward-facing window. By way of contrast, all kinds of viewing ports are sliced into the sides, bottom and top of this curious cube, affording neat views (at least until your neighbor expands with his own cube, that is).

floating suspended room

From the designer’s website:

“Located between art and architecture, between form and function, the Rucksack House is a walk-in sculpture with its own spatial quality, a floating light space that looks like a cross between temporary scaffolding and ‘minimal sculpture’. Mobile like a rucksack, this mini house is hung in front of the facade of any residential building with steel cables as a room extension and is taken by its residents when they move – whether a few houses away or to another country.”

floating room addition

“As an open space that can be individually experienced, it is only accessible privately – although it is visible to everyone in public space – it provides additional living space with direct daylight by means of fold-out furnishings and built-in openings.”

“With the idea of ​​docking a new room to an already existing room through a very simple and comprehensible method in the literal sense, the idea of ​​the self-made and anarchistically set tree house is reawakened, but this time placed more prominently and statically checked. The idea of ​​the Rucksack House as a fully functioning living space is the result of a fundamental artistic question: How can sculpture function outside the art context? What is your claim today, where is it used?”