Reconfigurable Off-Grid Cabin Designed for Flexible Living, Netherlands 30sqm-323sqft
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The design concept of Cabin Anna is really that instead of having a static house with closed
boundaries you actually have a transformative cabin where the boundaries are constantly
adjusted by yourself with your own muscle power to what's happening around you.
What basically sparked the beginning of Cabin Anna is that my father he passed away at a young age
he was 55 years old. I was 21 at that time and in that period I started having very vivid dreams
of him. He would come back to me and he kind of told me you have to go into nature. He was a
nature man. What happened is that I basically did the most literal thing you can do. I designed a
house that can open up to nature. I started to heal. I was surrounded by life. I literally came
to life. So the first Anna that I built was actually for my mother. Her name is Anna. It's
become a really important place for the whole family. Anna is just a place to be. That's it,
a place to be. This Cabin Anna is located in Wildlife Reserve De Biscos.
It's the freshwater delta, the only one in Europe. I didn't choose this location,
actually we got in touch with the wildlife organization. They were looking for a structure
that would actually help people open up to the environment and feel at one with nature.
This cabin is 30 square meters in its compact form and it can expand to 50 square meters.
Another thing that was really important to me in Cabin Anna is the fact that it's
demountable. So the whole cabin sits on a screw foundation. So it means that when we leave you
can take the cabin apart, pack it up in your truck and move it somewhere else. So that means
then when we leave with Cabin Anna we don't leave anything behind. This cabin roughly consists of
three parts. There would be the fixed house, it has inside the kitchen, it has the bathroom,
toilet and shower. There's a technical room which you can enter from the back side of the cabin.
The other part has the sliding glass layer and the wooden glass layer. Underneath that part there is
a bed in the ground that can be stored and there's a bath in the ground also. And it has a mezzanine
with an extra bed upstairs. So on top of that there's what we always call like the bonus layout
is that when you push out the glass you actually create a double-sized space of 50 square meters.
So you can basically host a dinner or a yoga retreat or whatever events you can imagine.
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When you arrive in the cabin there's a place to leave your coat. In the main living space you see
these long allocated windows and they have two purposes. One is that you always have some kind
of connection with the outdoors and the other thing is that they don't allow for any direct
sunlight in the summer. So on hot summer days the main space actually keeps very cool.
And then the first thing that will strike you is all these trusses.
Because basically the sliding shelves only have two walls to rely on instead of a normal house
which has four walls, there is a challenge in its rigidity. By using these trusses which are
cross-braced and reinforced you make sure that when the wind blows from one side that your cabin
doesn't blow over like that. You see similar constructions for example often in railway
stations because the train has to go through on two sides. We put a lot of effort in the thermal
envelope and we equip the cabin with HR++ glazing for example to make sure that even when it's
really cold outside you're going to have a very cozy space inside. The bed is foldable under the
ground with a wind system and that was very important to us because in the first cabin I
built for mom we had a fixed bed and every time we wanted to change the use of the cabin it meant
that we had to take out the bed. So being able to fold the bed under the ground just in a couple of
minutes means that you're very flexible in the use of your space. Once you store the bed you kind
of have an open plan cabin so you can host like a dinner or you can have friends over you can
have yoga sessions. So the bath in the ground is revealed in a similar way as the bed.
It has these floor pieces that you can just lift off and then there's a special storage
to fit them under the ground. I wanted to create this kind of zen experience when you're in the
bath you're not disturbed by any lids that are up or hinges that are sticking out so
yet to me the favorite part of the cabin is really the bath under the floor. You cannot
get closer to the essence of life. We like to create this little invention throughout the cabin
and one of them i think is particularly exciting is what we call the inverted dutch bike brake
system. The moment you start squeezing this brake the brake releases from the rails and you can
easily move the 3000 kilos but the moment you want to stop you just let go and automatically
it starts braking on the rails and it helps slow down the cabin a shell very quickly.
To make most use of the small kitchen space we actually created the galley kitchen.
It's a combination of stainless steel and the birch ply
and we like to work with stainless steel because it's very durable it's a very beautiful material.
It has all the basic amenities that you need so there's a stove there's a refrigerator here
and then on the other side you have grid that allows for mechanical heating if your wood stove
shouldn't be enough. In the earlier cabins we didn't have much storage it becomes messy quite
quickly so one thing that we wanted to redesign is actually to have a lot of big storage space
that you can fold nicely away and we just wanted to have like sort of one central storage compartment
and you can fold your folding table in there. This place is about connecting not just to the
environment but also to yourself to food. So then we arrive at the bathroom on your left side
there's a shower it's clad in stainless steel to make sure it's fully waterproof and it's very
aesthetic material and then we clad that with a koia wood to to give that like cozy feel
and we picked a koia because it performs very well in a humid environment.
So in the toilet we use the same principle actually at the bottom it's clad in stainless
steel so fully waterproof and then we clad that in koia wood and above that we use birch plywood
and then we have this big piece of glass in between the toilet and the shower so you
still feel that strong connection with the outdoors when you're having a shower.
Yeah so we made these wooden hooks everywhere in the cabin just to
blend away in the environment and they're very useful to hang whatever you want.
Above the kitchen there's the mezzanine and we created an extra sleeping place there for when
you have guests over and it's basically the same size bed as we have downstairs with a little bit
of extra storage space on each side. In the mezzanine we have a small extra vent to make
sure that you can blow some cool air in the hot summer days. This cabin is completely off-grid
we pump up our water from about 30 meters below the cabin. The waste water goes into a three-phase
sewage system which means that it's actually so clean that it can go directly back into the
wildlife reserve. The fireplace is connected to the boiler. In the summer you have your hot water
from your solar energy from a roof but in the winter when there's not so much sun here in the
wood stove. I think one thing that Anna is also really about is that sort of trying to inspire
that you can actually put a lot of quality and a lot of functionality in a very small space.
So you don't have to live in a 100 or 200 square meter
house to actually have architecturally very high quality space.
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