The Danish company VIPP (known for its iconic 1939 wastebasket, now in the MOMA) has created a prefab tiny home designed down to the last detail (flashlight included). Their 592-square-foot “plug and play getaway” wasn’t designed to blend into nature, but to float above it; fifty thousand pounds of glass and steel serve as a frame for the surrounding landscape.
VIPP designer Morten Bo Jensen explains that the shelter wasn’t designed as a piece of architecture, but an industrial object. The prefab structure is built in a factory and the four modules are transported by truck to the site. The shelter can be constructed in 3 to 5 days using just bolts for the modules and 9,000 screws for the steel plates.
The small prefab can house 4 people: 2 on a daybed and 2 in a loft bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls slide open and closed with mechanical rollers, designed to move the 400 or 500-kilo doors with ease. “We kind of like this idea that you just grab it and slide it open,” explains Jensen, “instead of motorized solutions that would be more different from our philosophy of very mechanical products that just last for a long time.”