Nomadic homes: new book celebrates life on the move

Abode’s come in all shapes, sizes, and extremes

Carl Turner’s Floating House, UK (Carl Turner Architects)

Nomadic homes come in all shapes and sizes. They are for the wealthy and the poor, the trendy and the out-of-luck. Changing place of residence is an idea that is as old as humanity, for reasons of season, or, more recently, to better occupy leisure time.

In Nomadic Homes, Philip Jodidio explores some of the most remarkable examples of homes on the move. Starting with totally revamped Airstream mobile homes, and going on to spectacular moveable holiday homes of the Epic Retreats “pop-up boutique hotel” in Wales, and going on to extravagant marine dwellings like BIG’s Urban Rigger. At the other end of the spectrum, we find refugee housing for those forced into a life on the move, including shelters designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban.

The book connects the nomadic spirit of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to modern-day living. Where architecture has often sought stability and thus the lack of movement, modernity has brought a sense of the finite, and a good deal of modesty about posterity and longevity. What more contemporary thought could there be than to seek nothing so much as to move, to grow perhaps, but always to move. “A good traveller,” said the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” As Nomadic Homes ably shows, it is the journey that counts.

‘Nomadic Homes’ by Philip Jodidio is available in hardback £49.99 here