Revitalizing Ken Isaacs

Yesterday I received a kind email from Glasgow School of Art design student Alec Farmer who wanted to thank us for sharing Ken Isaacs’ 1974 classic ‘How To Build Your Own Living Structures’ in our library. The DIY book focuses on how to build sustainable, eco-friendly, modular, flexible, multi-functional living structures which reconfigure the entire volume of a room, being bigger than furniture and smaller than architecture. As part of his dissertation at university, Farmer built and plans to live in a replica of Ken Isaacs’ microhouse in the centre of Glasgow.

Farmer’s interest in the ‘Urban Nomad’ movement, which focused on small scall, portable dwellings in urban locations, made him to build a replica of Ken Isaacs’ 50 year old microhouse. By living in this house for one year, he hopes to gain more insight into Isaacs’ design, and also into the movement as a whole. Farmer plans to move in at the start of September. He promises to document his journey on his Urban Nomad Version 2.0 blog.