Mobile Houses in Context: Israeli West Bank Settlements by Tulay Gunes
“The Western literature on mobile and portable buildings in architecture is largely structure-focused, technological and positivist. Prefabricated, portable and mobile housing units are celebrated and romanticized as prototypes that are relocatable, portable, adaptable and reusable according to the user’s will…Accordingly, the inhabitant becomes the ‘modern global nomad,’ ‘home all over the globe,’ who remains only temporary at a new physical location because the portable house is self-sustained and therefore focused on itself. It is viable in any location without influencing and being influenced by the immediate context, hence reflecting spatial and individual independence and freedom. The spatial and cultural contexts are considered passive with no impact from the mobile house onto the environment or its user’s activities that take place in it.
However, by concentrating on economy and speed of production and delivery, modern fabrication methods, structural design and the individual’s comfort, the discourse on mobile and portable houses overlooks the social and spatial context, the impact on their inhabitants and their use as a mass produced housing option. Furthermore, as an object, producible in large quantities and deployable quickly at various locations, mobile and portable houses can have a territorial meaning for particular regions. The mobile houses in the Israeli settlement development in the West Bank confirm this different story…”
See also: Mobility of Home
Both from Polar Inertia: journal of nomadic and popular culture
Via Pruned