Not Your Grandfather's Cabin

The quintessential woodsy getaway has become a cultural and architectural obsession of late. But why?

- Akiva Blander

Tiny living is now touted as an innovative and responsible residential choice. A recent preoccupation with cabins has inevitably followed. Perhaps comparable to last year’s trendy obsession with Nordic hygge culture, which emphasized a certain comfort and domestic splendor, the cabin phenomenon has suffused many aspects of the design world. (There seems, in any case, no escape from the cottage industry of cabin-themed coffee-table books and stylish but useless manuals.)

The fascination is easily explained, at least in part. Enduring cultural notions see in the cabin not just the promise of a getaway but also restoration, primarily through rarefied contact with nature. Indeed, the cabin’s smallness can act to “limit the imprint of form on the natural context,” says Neeraj Bhatia, cocurator of the recent Ways of Life exhibition in Kassel, Germany, which displayed prototype cabin-esque dwellings that examined the changing relationships between work and domestic life, the individual and nature. These relationships, Bhatia adds, “need to be negotiated through architecture.”

For architects, the allure is in the clarity of the program. The univocal purpose of a cabin—basic, temporary shelter—and its small scale invite experimentation with concept, siting, and materials. Further, it offers designers complete control. “There is the possibility to be present in all decisions and get hands-on experience on a complete project,” explains Anne Cecilie Haug, a senior architect at Snohetta who was involved in the design of the firm’s Gapahuk cabin project.