Elevate your camping style with the latest high-performance gear like twig-burning stoves, tree tents, bear-proof coolers and portable loungers. These major upgrades will keep you dry, warm, fed and comfortable no matter how rugged your destination, even when you’re traveling on foot instead of in a DIY RV, fancy pop-up car tent or luxuriously equipped off-road trailer.

Biolite Basecamp Stove

By now, you’ve probably seen the cool BioLite, a compact portable stove that burns twigs and then uses the heat as energy to power your gadgets (if not, you should check it out!) Now, the company is taking things up a notch with the BaseCamp, a portable grill that runs on larger pieces of wood. Smaller pieces of firewood or fallen branches both can be placed in the stove’s opening to cook your food – even in camping locations that don’t allow campfires – and an orange power pack on the side collects the energy. The BaseCamp also features a built-in light.

Scrubba Portable Laundry Wash Bag

Prefer not to tote dirty laundry around on an extended camping trip, or want to freshen up your favorite hoodie halfway through? The Scrubba is a brilliantly simple way to wash textiles. Its interior is lined with little nubs that scrub your garments as you massage the exterior of the bag for a machine-quality wash in three minutes. That’s more effective than using a bucket, and you never even have to get your hands dirty. The bag weighs just 5 ounces and doubles as a dry bag.

Tentsile Tree Tent

Marketing itself as a ‘portable tree house,’ the Tentstile tree tent lets you sleep high above the ground (how high is up to you!) by attaching to three nearby tree trunks. Stack them on top of each other to create temporary treehouse cities with your friends, or hang hammocks underneath them for an extra dry sleeping space. The number of people you can sleep using these systems is only as limited as the tree trunks around you.

Yeti Hopper Cooler

Dubbed ‘the world’s toughest cooler,’ the Yeti has become a household name for its durability and dependability. The hard-sided Yetis keep food and ice colder for longer than any other cooler on the market, and now the company is offering soft-sided versions, too, like the Hopper and the Hopper Flip. Each one is waterproof, including the Hydrolok zipper, and can withstand a bear mauling.

Sea to Summit Tarp Poncho

Heading into rainy territory? Keep your gear – and yourself – dry with the Sea to Summit Ultra-Sil Nano Tarp Poncho. Made of lightweight waterproof fabric, it’s big enough to accommodate your pack while you’re hiking, and then converts from a wearable into an ultralight 2-person shelter.

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Off-grid housing is almost always relegated to remote areas due to strict urban building codes and access to affordable land, but sometimes self-contained structures pop up in parks, on rooftops and in canals anyway – or the owners of more conventional city dwellings simply cut the cord. There are already a lot of different ways to go off-grid in the city, most explored by necessity due to poverty, others seeking a more sustainable way of life without giving up community and convenience. From rooftop structures and mobile housing to entirely new self-powered city blocks, these solutions work within cities that already exist rather than envisioning expensive futuristic eco-cities from the ground up.

The Mobiators

Somewhere between a DIY cabin, a tent and a mobile home, this strange structure by The Mobiation Project travels through Amsterdam, setting up in locations all over the city as a statement about the increasingly broken global economy and damage to the environment. Built by an artist/architect and a carpenter/designer, The Mobi-01 acts as an interactive, inhabitable, ‘open-house’ example of an off-grid structure that can set up virtually anywhere.

Off-Grid Rooftop Penthouse in Canada

Reclaiming the rooftop space atop urban structures isn’t a new idea, but it’s rare to see them disconnected from the power grid, like this former mechanical room on a 19-floor office building in Edmonton, Canada. Architect Vivian Manasc saw potential in the structure when doing a technical evaluation of the building, and ultimately transformed it into a home for herself. The home horseshoes around an existing elevator core, which warms the space passively, and gets its power from solar panels.

Free Off Grid Camping on a NYC Rooftop

Bivouac is a pop-up campsite rotating to different rooftop spots around New York City, consisting of little more than six waterproof canvas tents with wooden frames and wool floor mats, a kitchen area with a table, and a small library. There’s no internet, electricity or showers, and you can’t have a campfire, but at least there’s access to a toilet within the building. It’s entirely free, and an interesting concept, though one wonders what this project says about accessing urban spaces when you’re well-off just for fun versus the tent cities created by homeless people who have nowhere else to go.

Off-Grid Urban Block for Dallas, Texas

What if entire city blocks could be designed to power themselves, built in areas that were previously disused, like former industrial properties or rail yards? Winner of the Re:Vision Dallas competition, ‘Forwarding Dallas’ envisions a complex of living spaces inspired by rolling hills, with vegetation-covered roofs, solar panels, wind turbines, and passive solar louvers covering the building’s glass facades to regulate heat. The block also has its own rooftop water catchment system, a greenhouse, a swimming pool and other communal spaces. The 40,000-square-meter complex could sustainably house 854 people within the space of a typical city block.

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Urban Off Grid 12 Creative Solutions For Self Sustainability In The City

If the standard camping trailer just isn’t extreme enough for you, maybe a compact ‘bug out trailer’ with monster wheels, a full kitchen and a pop-up roof tent will satisfy your survivalist impulses. Designed for adventurous off-roading types, these trailers are designed to facilitate max comfort no matter how far out into the wilderness you may wander.

Schutt Xventure

From the same company building trailer platforms for the armed forces comes the ‘Xventure,’ a severe-duty trailer packed with military-grade gear. It’s got an all-aluminum weldless construction, electric brakes, a removable tailgate offering a heavy-duty work surface and a large front utility cabinet holding jerry cans, tools, lighting equipment and more.

Turtleback Weekender

Made in Phoenix, Arizona, the Turtleback Weekender is a lightweight aluminum trailer with marine-grade electrical components, Lockable exterior compartments, cargo rack, kitchen, shower and more. It has a small frame to fit standard family vehicles, so you don’t need a huge beefy truck to transport it. Use the roof rack to carry items like kayaks, and as an elevated tent platform.

Tigermoth Trailer

This compact trailer is a workhorse, taking you off-grid in comfort while weighing just 900 pounds so it can be towed just about anywhere. The Tigermoth camping trailer boasts a side-hatch entrance, built-in LED lights, running water, power outlets, USB ports, a mounted toolbox, roof racks, cargo decks in the front and the back, and optional solar panels.

Moab Fort by Bivouac Camping Trailer

“Designed to go beyond pavement where camp sites are declared, not rented,” the Moab Fort by Bivouac Camping Trailer makes off-grid exploration more comfortable without requiring a huge, bulky setup. It’s a small utility trailer packed with cargo space for bikes, canoes, tents, propane tanks and any other gear you want to bring along. Various parts extend outward, like tables and sun shades.

OPUS Self-Inflating Camper Trailer

The inside of this camper trailer is surprisingly swanky given its low profile, and unlike traditional pop-up camper trailers, the OPUS self-inflates within 90 seconds into a well-ventilated multi-room space. The full setup includes a kitchen with a stove, sink and refrigerator and a seating area that converts into a bed.

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Wrapped in living greenery, the upper story of this solar-powered, tree-shaped dwelling branches outward, set upon a wooden framework supporting it from below.

Designed by Elevate Structure Inc. in Hawaii (photos by Corey Lum for Civil Beat), the 40-square-foot-base expands upward to a 400-square-foot second floor above, overhanging to provide shade for outdoor uses (patios or parking) underneath.

Eco-friendly features include living and breathing exterior walls that can also be used to grow edible produce, self-sufficient solar power generation via side and top panels and rainwater storage and collection (up to 1,500 gallons).

The modular structure was originally designed as an easy-to-ship, simple-to-build and off-the-grid solution for remote parts of Oahu, but the target has since been expanded due to broader public interest.

While they work wonderfully as elevated homes, the units can also be used for other purposes, including small stores, cafes, offices, gyms and/or storage spaces.

From its creators: “Inspired by Hawaii’s natural beauty, Elevate founders Tiffany and Nathan set out to create these innovative structures to help care for the environment and help people. The pressure of existing global issues – insufficient water availability in areas, poor air and water quality in others, and high energy consumption are exacerbated by the increasing population density and demands of urban environments – combined with their streak of entrepreneurship brought the Elevate unit to life.”

Why stay tethered to the grid in a fixed location when you could live in a compact mobile pod that can be transported to the location of your choice? These modern capsules are what 21st-century off-grid dreams are made of, ranging from spacious self-sustaining retreats to accordion-like expanding shelters that are lightweight enough to tow behind a bicycle.

Tricycle House

Made mostly out of folded polypropylene, ‘Tricycle House’ by People’s Industrial Design Office is lightweight enough to be towed around like a bike trailer. The house can be expanded like an accordion to increase the space inside or make it more compact for travel. Translucent walls let in daylight and all amenities within – including a sink, stove, bath tub, water tank and transforming furniture – is manually powered. The firm also makes ‘tricycle gardens’ to tow alongside the house.

Egg-Like Ecocapsule

Shaped like a massive egg, the Ecocapsule by Nice Architects is a tiny off-grid living pod that’s equipped with all the comforts of home, including a bed, hot showers, flushing toilets and the capability to cook. Powered by solar panels and a built-in turbine, with a back-up battery for cloudy and still days, it can be shipped, air-lifted or towed and fits into a standard shipping container.

Diogene Hut by Renzo Piano

Designed by architect Renzo Piano for the Vitra campus in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, the Diogene cabin offers 80 square feet for an individual occupant as a “voluntary place of retreat.” Photovoltaic panels and a rainwater retention tank make it self-sufficient, and it’s highly portable. There’s just enough room inside for a bed, table and chair.

Portable Retreat with a Roof Hatch

Three hinged panels open this two-level off-grid retreat to the sky on both the top and bottom floors, enhancing the occupant’s connection to whatever environment they’ve chosen. This mobile wooden shelter by Allergutendinge features a bunch of fold-down elements, hidden storage and a bed that doubles as a staircase to the loft.

Camouflage Stacked Wood Cabin

This ‘invisible hut’ looks like no more than a stack of logs when it’s all closed up, but a hatch on one side drops down to become the terrace for a rustic cabin. The Yeta Log Cabin by Lab Zero can be set up virtually anywhere, and as small and minimal as it is, it comes complete with a kitchen, shower, toilet and solar panels.

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Mobile Modern Modular 15 Capsules For Off Grid Living