Mobile

The allure of mobile, portable architecture is worldwide and centuries old, from the desert tents of the bedouin to the silvery capsules of the Airstream trailer. This text explores the ever-growing range of possibilities of portable, demountable, and mobile structures. Jennifer Siegal brings together the work of contemporary designers of dynamic, active structures, whose work ranges from the microenvironment of a house that literally attaches to your body to the city-scaled macroenvironment of London's Millennium Dome, from the interior of a Boeing jet to an entire mobile community whose living units plug into a framework of flexible communal space, and from the practical design of transportable office space to the whimsical design of Pink Floyd's The Wall stage set. All of the designs celebrate the lightness, transience and practicality that mobile architecture makes possible. The volume includes work by Office of Mobile Design, LOT/EK, Vito Acconci, Doug Jackson/LARGE, Mark Fisher, Michael Fox, FTL Happold, Festo, and Lawrence Scarpa. Using colour images, text and detailed drawings, the contributors reveal their working methods.