More so than any other year before, 2020 was one of difficult and unexpected challenges, personal and collective tragedy, reinvention and adjustment, and widespread wanderlust. Stemming from this always-present need to just get away is this concept of a mobile, foldable home.
If you ever watched Pixar’s Up and wondered to yourself whether you’d ever be able to just tie a bunch of balloons to your house and simply take off, this is the real-life version of it. “Real-life” is one way of putting it because it’s just a concept by San Francisco-based multidisciplinary design studio SFSO imagining a possible near-future.
Dubbed simply Mobile Cabin, this project envisions a future in which non-invasive tourism becomes standard, allowing for the exploration of even the most remote locations with zero impact on the environment. Why drive a motorhome or a tiny home to one such location (assuming you could drive up there, in the first place) when you could book a cabin on an app and have it dropped there by drone or airship?
The Mobile Cabin would be made of plastic and wood, measuring 2.2 x 1.5 x 2.2 meters (7.2 x 4.9 x 7.2 feet). More importantly, it would collapse and expand according to needs. It would be small, ideal for just two people, but it would have everything you’d need for an extended stay out in the wild – as long as it doesn’t exceed a couple of weeks, one can assume. There’d be a water tank in the lower frame, a battery pack for all your electricity needs, a tank for food waste, and a utility container. Ready-to-eat meals would be dropped by drone at regular intervals, so you’d be eating airplane-type of food but against a gorgeous backdrop.
SFSO also imagines how the Mobile Cabin would work. Say, for example, you want to spend a week at the top of a mountain: you go online on the app and book a cabin, with the dates and the location of your choosing. The closest droneport would send a cargo drone to drop the folded cabin onto that spot – assuming a droneport is available on a 500-mile (804-km) radius. If not, an airship will do the job, as long as it’s within a 1,000-mile (1,609-km) radius.
You’re in charge of your own transportation and, once you get to your destination, you’re supposed to do all the setting up yourself. Luckily, the Mobile Cabin is easily deployed; easier than pitching a tent, based on the renders. When your stay is over, and you have made sure to leave no trace of your presence there, you pack the cabin back up and go back to civilization. A drone comes to pick it up and take it to the droneport to empty and clean/sanitize, making it ready for the next customer.
Granted, this 4-step “easy” process of enjoying a spot of non-invasive tourism in the most unlikely, remote locations implies the existence of an infrastructure for the drones and the airships used, among other things. On the grounds of “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” should this Mobile Cabin concept ever become reality, it would provide a solution to the damaging side-effects of overtourism, including to local communities and the environment. In addition, it would offer short-term access to areas that would otherwise be out of reach.
The idea itself of a readily-available cabin wherever you want it to be is incredibly appealing and not even a new one. The proto-tiny home Futuro was born out of a similar desire: to deliver a practical, comfortable living solution wherever you wanted.
Such a mobile unit would be especially appealing if it came at an affordable price and offered the guarantee that it wouldn’t topple over at the smallest snowstorm. Because, let’s be real about it, this one doesn’t seem particularly sturdy on its four small support pillars – but that’s probably the kind of compromise you have to make when you want to leave no trace behind.
Dubbed simply Mobile Cabin, this project envisions a future in which non-invasive tourism becomes standard, allowing for the exploration of even the most remote locations with zero impact on the environment. Why drive a motorhome or a tiny home to one such location (assuming you could drive up there, in the first place) when you could book a cabin on an app and have it dropped there by drone or airship?
SFSO also imagines how the Mobile Cabin would work. Say, for example, you want to spend a week at the top of a mountain: you go online on the app and book a cabin, with the dates and the location of your choosing. The closest droneport would send a cargo drone to drop the folded cabin onto that spot – assuming a droneport is available on a 500-mile (804-km) radius. If not, an airship will do the job, as long as it’s within a 1,000-mile (1,609-km) radius.
Granted, this 4-step “easy” process of enjoying a spot of non-invasive tourism in the most unlikely, remote locations implies the existence of an infrastructure for the drones and the airships used, among other things. On the grounds of “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” should this Mobile Cabin concept ever become reality, it would provide a solution to the damaging side-effects of overtourism, including to local communities and the environment. In addition, it would offer short-term access to areas that would otherwise be out of reach.
Such a mobile unit would be especially appealing if it came at an affordable price and offered the guarantee that it wouldn’t topple over at the smallest snowstorm. Because, let’s be real about it, this one doesn’t seem particularly sturdy on its four small support pillars – but that’s probably the kind of compromise you have to make when you want to leave no trace behind.