Danish Retailer’s Prefab Nature Cabins Are ‘Battery Charging Stations For Humans’

Vipp’s latest project mirrors the industrial design esthetic that its customers have come to expect from the Denmark-based home decor retailer: factory-produced prefab “micro-dwellings” that have a very unique and very specific purpose.

Each of the 55-square-metre structures, which the company has dubbed Shelter, is meant to be a nature retreat for the user. According to Vipp’s Kasper Egelund, who heads the Shelter brand, these prefab buildings are intended to be “battery-charging stations for humans.”

Another aspect of the Shelter brand that is somewhat unique is that each of the prefab units is completely outfitted with the company’s various homeware products, including its iconic pedal trash bins, which Vipp has produced since 1939.

The idea behind the Shelter design, with its glass walls opening to the outdoors, is blend into the natural surroundings. “The starting point of the Vipp Shelter is going back to basics; back to nature in a dense, compact space wrapped in the Vipp DNA,” notes the company’s website. “The landscape is purposely framed, turning it into the predominant element of the interior space. Each piece of interior and its dominant dark tones are carefully selected in order to keep focus on nature. The sliding window frames accentuate the sensation of living in nature by blurring the distinction between indoor and outdoor space.”

“A simple steel grid structurally supports the two-level space, where only the bathroom and bed loft is shielded from the main living space,” explains the Vipp website. “Large windows on both sides and in the ceiling lets nature take centre stage. The shelter is a finished product inspired by large volume objects such as planes, ferries and submarines, where every single screw serves a purpose.”

Once the unit has been constructed, it’s then shipped to the buyer’s chosen location via truck.

Installation of the Vipp Shelter typically takes between three to five days, after the first step of lifting the structure off the back of the truck with a large crane, which then lowers it to the desired location.

“Everything you see is Vipp,” says the website of the Shelter. “And it is all inclusive. The Vipp Shelter is delivered fully equipped for a complete design experience and an easy escape. There is no evident link between a pedal bin, a kitchen, and a shelter, but enter the shelter and the philosophy of one, long-lasting, functional tool per category is embodied in every item you see.”

Vipp describes its 52-square-metre Shelter as “a plug-and-play getaway allowing you to escape urban chaos.” Once it’s been installed, all you have to do is move in, as each Shelter has been outfitted with “all the necessities and nothing more.” A wood-burning stove provides a self-sufficient source of heat, with storage for firewood located in the Shelter’s exterior.

Two chambers protrude from the roof, one of which contains a light chimney, while the other is where the loft bedroom is located (a daybed on the main level offers additional sleeping space). The bedroom is shielded from view on all sides, but features a large skylight above to provide natural light during the day.

The bathroom features a glass-walled shower, and is completely outfitted with a variety of Vipp bathroom items, everything from the mirror and vanity to soap dispensers and toilet-cleaning brushes.

The sleeping loft is accessed by this ladder, which discreetly blends into to the dark-coloured wall.

A light chimney is featured in the other “protrusion” extending above the main living space, flooding the room with natural light from above while the sliding glass window walls bring nature right inside.

“Nature is omnipresent within the transparent shell,” adds the company website, “yet with a physical blindage in the form of parallel, sliding windows that provide shelter from the forces of nature.”

“There is no evident link between a pedal bin, a kitchen and a Shelter, but enter the Shelter and the philosophy of one, long-lasting, functional tool per category is embodied in every object you see,” states the company.

“The objective was not to make a house or a mobile home,” says Vipp chief designer Morten Bo Jensen. “Vipp is rooted in the manufacture of industrial objects, so the term Shelter is a typology that allows us to define this hybrid as a spacious, functionally generic, livable object.”

As Jensen explains: “There is plenty of amazing architecture out there, but we wanted to conceive something different; an escape in the form of an object designed down to last detail, where the only choice left to the customer, is where to put it.”

The guiding principle underlying the Vipp Shelter is one of going back to basics, and back to nature. “We are challenging the trend that everything we surround ourselves with has to be high-technological”, explains Jensen.

Given the nature of this project, it was important to make the home as self-sufficient as possible from an energy standpoint. “If you are cold you heat up the fireplace centrally positioned in the shelter for an equal distribution of heat; if you are warm you slide open the parallel windows to create natural air-condition,” Jensen points out. “By locating the house in the deep deciduous woods, we are able to take advantage of the leaves as sun shading in the summer months. In the winter, when the trees lose their leaves, the building’s black exterior absorbs sunlight and with the fireplace, there is a reduction in fuel consumption.”