Caspar Schols | Boomers Daily

Kirsten Dirksen Films (May 28, 2023) – Caspar Schols built his first shapeshifting house in his mother’s backyard as her writing cabin that, by sliding a room-on-rails, could convert into a place to sleep under the stars.

He has since perfected his expandable home with 10 prototypes: his most recent model is robust enough to serve as a primary residence and has a bathtub and guest bed hidden in the floor. The house can be opened up – on sunny days, for nature-watching or just to sleep directly under the stars – with just a push.

The entire walls and ceiling of the house move, but anyone can propel this 3,000 kilograms (over 6000 pounds) room-on-rails because Schols created a system that is “super low friction”. To create a well-insulated home that has walls that move, Schols and his team designed the rails with wind labyrinths to trap the air and added brushes to any moving surface to prevent airflow.

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Architectural designer Caspar Schols is producing a flat-pack version of a garden shed with moving walls, which he built for his parents before he went to architecture school, as cabins for living and for working.

Schols drew on the Garden House pavilion he completed with no formal architecture training in Eindhoven in 2016 to develop two design: the ANNA Stay home and the ANNA Meet workplace. As with Garden House, the Cabin ANNA concepts have and inner beam-and-glass structure that is separated from the outer wooden walls and metal roof, and set on runners. This means they can be moved and outwards to create different layouts.

“A sellable, fully inhabitable house, a flat-pack that could be built and re-built anywhere in the world,” Schols said. “A dynamic home in the shape of an open platform to live with rather than against the elements, by playing with the configuration of the layers of the house – just like the way you dress yourself to suit different weather conditions, occasions and moods.”