Half Dose #39: Rolling Huts

One of the recipients of this year's AIA Seattle Honor Awards is the aptly-named Rolling Huts by the critic's darlings, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects.



The firm's embrace and occasional forays into the industrial is clearly evident here, with their steel wheels, frame and less-than-polished surfaces.



The architects responded to local restrictions that restricted cabins (a building "type" this office appears to produce almost constantly), "hit[ting] upon the idea of placing the structures on wheels, effectively making the huts into RVs."



AIA Seattle praised the project for its playfulness, "a willingness to question local idiomatic practice, [and being] raw, edgy, unafraid of the challenging aspects of nature." The local organization hits on the idea that "the user cannot escape the fact that the buildings impose on the landscape, with their steel wheels and tentative siting. These simple structures engage the spiritual question of our place in the landscape."



Nevertheless the interiors are finished in an apparently minimal, clean, and well-appointed manner that makes the experience less than "roughing it," as one might expect from the notion of a hard-edged, industrial-like cabin on steel wheels.



Links:

:: Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
:: AIA Seattle Honor Awards (Rolling Huts image gallery)