Mobitecture

Rebecca Roke, Mobitecture. Architecture on the Move, Phaidon, London 2017, 320 pp.

  Edited by Rebecca Roke and published by Phaidon, Mobitecture celebrates mobile architecture in all its forms through 320 pages and more than 300 photos. Ranging from quirky to sensible and from rustic to deluxe, featured projects include houseboats, huts, and tricked-out caravans, alongside disaster shelters, wearable structures, and futuristic prototypes. The volume is arranged in chapters, according to each project’s primary means of mobility: from structures than can be carried by hand and on foot (Human), those that stack, fold, inflate and move by means other than wheels (No Wheels) to those on various numbers of wheels (One & Two Wheels, Three Wheels, Four Wheels and Five + Wheels), as well as those that move on snow and ice (Sleds +), or on lakes, rivers and oceans (Water).

  This compactly designed volume features more than 250 examples of mobile architecture from around the world that “roll, inflate, unfold, flat-pack or pop-up, slide on sleds and float across water, bringing together a spectacular collection of structures in which to revel, live, work or pause.” Behind the success and enduring appeal of mobile architecture is “the way they free us from the usual constraints of daily life”, writes the author. “Adaptable, lightweight, responsive to local conditions and with the ability to travel almost anywhere with ease: these inherent qualities of ‘mobitecture’ imply the opposite of our usual stationary, brick-and-mortar-bound existences.”