Prefab Portable Mountain Cabin
If you saw it sitting in the landscape, you would be hard-pressed to guess that this metal, wood and glass house designed by the Hangar Group has hidden mobility – let alone that it was secretly prefabricated in a factory and shipped to its site.
Contemporary hybrid (zinc, steel and titanium) cladding is designed both to camouflage the home in a rocky-mountain environment but also serves to make the prefab cabin look more solid, robust and modern than you might expect from a trailer home. Vertical wood strips of siding at either end provide creative contrast – almost like the exposed rings of some giant metal log – and punctuate the entry points.
The story is much the same on the inside: synthetic stone-toned tiles and natural wooden flooring, walls and ceiling slats make it feel like a clean, compact and modern cabin. Minimalist fixtures and the copious use of room-warming wood are reminiscent of North European architecture built for cold climates – saunas and sweat lodges normally constructed to heat you up but not for nomadic living.
“The Compasso d’Oro winning project presents wide windows, enhancing continuity between the inner and outer space, creating terraces that give onto the landscape with harmonious gracefulness,” say the designers. “The bright aluminium silhouette hosts the alternate sliding of the wood panel and large-windows. The living room gently makes space for the sleeping area.”
Hangar Design Group’s micro houses on wheels upgrade and elevate the aesthetics of the ordinary trailer, merging them with modern design and rustic possibilities for remote portable cabins that are worthy of your forest-dwelling daydreams.
Other similar box-style portable housing units by the Hangar Design Group reflect similar sensibilities toward simplicity of space and elegant contrasts in terms of color, materiality, openness and privacy. Some are intended to be stand-alone nomadic structures, while others are envisioned as existing at the intersection of fully-mobile modern RVs and semi-permanent contemporary trailer parks.
