Collapsible Urban Shelters

Brooklyn-based artist and architect Chat Travieso has designed a series of collapsible shelters for urban camping purposes.

Made of steel, wood, aluminum, masonite, plastic, foam, canvas, and found cart, Travieso’s good-looking one-person structures are foldable and allow for easy set-up anywhere in the urban jungle. The collapsible shelters No. 1 No. 2 and No. 3 are light-weight and could be used as little homes for urban campers or homeless people.

Collapsible urban shelters

Collapsible urban shelters

Nevertheless, the foldable shelters are not really meant to be used as a living space — they’re rather playful urban interventions that encourage people to question the role of public and private spaces in the city. With his tactical interventions Travieso aims to let people perceive the city in a different way.

Related Insights

The Kitchen Square

Cooking Up Community: Transforming a Town Square into an Open Air Kitchen

Once a regular town square in Stockholm, a space has been reimagined to bring people together in a unique way. Architect-artist Elin Strand Ruin, working alongside local women, transformed it into the Kitchen Square — a vibrant open-air kitchen fostering a strong sense of community and connection.

Ghost Rivers

Subterranean Streams: Ghost Rivers Revive Baltimore’s Hidden Past

Artist Bruce Willen is bringing back an old submerged river in Baltimore through a 2.4-kilometre urban intervention.

Elephant paths on Michigan State University's campus

Elephant Paths: Paving the Way for a Human-Centered Public Space at Michigan State University

Public space designers on the new campus of Michigan State University intentionally allowed spontaneous elephant paths to emerge in order to create a pedestrian infrastructure that's much more logical and human-centered.