Currently perched atop the Avoriaz Mountain in France so guests can flip from their beds straight onto the ski slopes, this traveling minimalist hotel made of shipping containers signals a new nomadic future for comfortable accommodations. Instead of housing attendees in tents, events in far-flung locales can now offer all the comfort of an urban hotel – including private bathrooms.

The Flying Nest by French designer Ora-ïto made its debut on the consumer market this winter at the Avoriaz Ski Resort after nearly two years of road testing. In March 2017, a prototype was placed just steps away from the fields where France’s national football team trains, and then it travelled to the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race, the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival and the Agora biennial art festival in Bordeaux.

Each of the shipping containers is lined with warm wood inside and out, all sourced from certified forests, for a clean, neutral and natural appearance. Measuring 130 square feet, the units offer a living area, bathroom and a white linen bed tucked beside a picture window for views of the location du jour as well as air conditioning and wi-fi. The containers stack on top of each other into “islands” of six, connected by terraces to encourage intermingling of guests.

The project aims to offer “unique hospitality experiences during outstanding events and to meet accommodation needs where hotel capacity is at its saturation point.” Since the hotel is totally self-contained, providing its own utilities, it can be placed virtually anywhere that can be accessed by trucks, cranes or helicopters, from deserts and beaches to mountaintops, without making a significant impact on the site.

With its black facade, stylish roof slant and fold-down deck, the new ‘Draper’ RV by Land Ark is ready to cruise all over the country and look hot doing it. The lines between recreational vehicles and tiny houses continue to blur, and while the Draper is closer to the latter than the former, it runs on standard RV-style hookups, and it’s easy to imagine it sliding into an RV park to instantly make the rest of the residents look terribly uncool.

But looks aren’t all the Draper has to offer. The 300-square-foot midcentury modern RV features a mud room entry with a 7-foot-wide wardrobe, a washer and dryer, recessed lighting, clerestory windows for lots of natural light while maintaining privacy, a full-size walk-in shower, a spacious galley kitchen, a lofted bed and a convertible U-sofa that transforms into a queen bed for guests.

The interiors are sleek and streamlined, nearly every surface covered in pale whitewashed pine, and in stark contrast to the usual RV fittings, the Draper’s propane-powered stainless steel appliances rival those you’d find in an upscale home (albeit much smaller.) Sliding glass doors lead out to a fold-down deck that’s lowered and raised with a hand-operated winch. There’s more storage than it seems at first glance, including an area for shoes.

The Draper was designed to be most comfortable for individuals or couples, but if you like the look and need a tad more space, Land Ark’s ‘Drake’ model might be a better fit. Measuring 357 square feet, the Drake sleeps up to six and has a similar look, though the sharp roof angle is sacrificed for more loft space. The Drake is listed at $139,000, while the Draper starts at $144,900.

Every year, Amsterdam’s Centrumeiland of Ijburg hosts ‘Urban Campsite,’ a public exhibition of sculptural habitats allowing local residents and tourists can spend the night in mobile sculptures. Designers, artists and architects are invited to create cool structures that are way more interesting than the average tent and install them at Science Park, a new area in Amsterdam-East. This year’s theme is ‘The Art of Tech-Living,’ envisioning how art can give science and technology a little boost of imagination.

“Did you ever feel the urge to sleep in a piece of art? Well, then this is your chance! UrbanCampsite is the place where a camping and unique artistic objects meet. You can stay in beautiful, special, sometimes crazy works of art furnished as a hotel room. The UrbanCampsite offers its guests all the amenities of a normal campsite … and quite a lot more than that!”

Prospective guests book the individual habitats on AirBnB, and each sculpture is fully furnished inside. These ‘sleeping objects’ typically have room for two, though a couple will fit children as well, and they range from 85-120 Euros per night. They’re often made of reclaimed materials like trampolines, shrink wrap, pallets and metallic insulation.

For 2017, the selection of sleeping objects includes a mini monastery with an oak sapling at its center, a giant camera obscura, a Dutch electric car from the 70s once used as a mobile post office, a stargazing lab, a 360-degree rotating research ship and a “luxury bungalow made of a sewer tube,” among others.

“Waiting for Water” by Stefanie Rittler and Sascha Henken, for example, bills itself as a humorous view on climate change, saying “The sea water level is constantly rising. Should we wait or change something?” In any case, you can enjoy the views from the upper-level bedroom while the exhibition is still safe on dry land.

The problem of homelessness is a complex one rooted in gross stratification of wealth, and while addressing it in full means addressing poverty itself, temporary portable housing can save lives in the meantime. Many cities are implementing transitional housing programs that make use of inexpensive, easy to move structures in interstitial urban spaces. The Martin Architecture and Design Workshop (MADWORKSHOP) teamed up with students from the University of Southern California School of Architecture (USC) to come up with some creative examples of these structures.

‘The Homeless Studio’ is an organization aiming to address LA’s homelessness crisis through design. Students built a series of full-scale, inhabitable nomadic shelters ranging from contraptions that fit onto shopping carts to more comfortable structures that wouldn’t be out of place in a tiny house village. Most of the materials were scavenged from around Los Angeles, and the designs had to be collapsible and suitable for a variety of locations.

The results are sometimes more artistic than they are practical – like a hut clad in retail mannequin displays – but in many cases, the interiors are cozy and well-lit by windows and skylights, and one design even has a roof deck.

The aim of actually addressing homelessness didn’t just consist of building a few weird-looking structures and calling it a day. The students worked with city officials, local agencies, artist and activists to come up with a holistic solution in a city where nearly 47,000 people live on the streets. They’re making repeated visits to local agencies like the Skid Row Housing Trust and the Downtown Women’s Center, speaking to people experiencing homelessness to get firsthand information about their needs.

They’ll also be taking the hands-on skills and knowledge they gained through this project and applying it to a larger solution, designing a 30-bed modular shelter for women for Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission in San Fernando Valley. Their efforts over the course will be documented and compiled into a publication set for publishing by the USC School of Architecture in 2017.

Not just cold comfort, these portable shacks designed to be towed out onto frozen lakes come in a variety of forms, from the practical and resourceful to the funny and artistic.  These ice fishing hut designs demonstrate how surprisingly warm and cozy the simplest of shelters can be – and prove that people who live in the world’s coldest climates (happily spending their spare time engaging in recreational outdoor activities in subzero temps) are way hardier than the rest of us.

Fishing Hut & Hot Tub Combo

A group of local anglers in Calgary came up with a pretty brilliant way to stay warm while out on the ice: a towable hot tub, which they pull out onto frozen lakes alongside their fishing hut. It takes a couple hours to heat up, but the waiting time has got to be worthwhile once you get in. “We weren’t catching any fish, so we thought we’d do something else,” says the tub’s creator, Scott Chesterman.

Ice Fishing Hut with Frozen Walls

Rather than hauling a pre-made hut out onto the water, you could work with what’s already there. This mobile fisherman’s hut design by Norwegian architecture studio Gartnerfuglen is made of a wooden frame and wire mesh, used as a form for ice. Once the walls freeze into place, the inside is insulated. In the summertime, it can be used as a garden shed, with the wire supporting climbing plants.

The Art Shanty Project: 8 Creative Hut Designs

Is this the polar opposite of Burning Man? Over 1,000 artists have designed and built creative ice shanties for the annual ‘Art Shanty Project’ over the last decade, covering the frozen surface of a Minnesota lake like an iced-over version of the popular desert festival. The creations include wooden stick-framed shacks, geodesic domes, tipis, sculptural structures and mobile shanties of all kinds, put on display for thousands of tourists to see for an event that’s uniquely Minnesotan.

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Angling For Warmth In Winter 21 Ice Fishing Hut Designs