Shelter from the Storm

Rudimentary construction questions our fundamental needs for grounding, play, and isolation. Through deeply tangible approaches, several artists redefine this specific architecture. With his 1960s concrete Playground Sculptures, such as Castle and Moon House, Jim Miller-Melberg approaches the cabin through the lens of childhood and modular design. His ergonomic, perforated structures offer children public micro-sanctuaries—hollow geometries to inhabit temporarily to reinvent the way they play. This structural rigor echoes the research of the Centrum Cubische Constructies (led by William Graatsma and Jan Slothouber), which rationalized space through the prism of the cube. Their modular cubic constructions transform into a universal mathematical system, a minimalist habitat born from the infinite assembly of a single, repeating matrix.

In contrast to this physical rigor, the cabin becomes conceptual, even weightless, for other visual artists. In her performance and installation My House in the Air, Korean artist Jisoo Yoo walks barefoot through Paris, carrying an inflatable, transparent, and iridescent house above her head. Here, the cabin is literally uprooted: it symbolizes a dream refuge, yet proves impossible to inhabit, reflecting the personal precariousness, bureaucracy, and instability tied to migration. Finally, Laure Prouvost, with In Reflection We Rest, deploys a sensory and immersive approach where the shelter becomes a space for contemplation and physical retreat. By blending organic textures and projections, she designs environments that envelop the visitor, recreating the primitive essence of the cabin: a closed-off space to escape the noise of the world. From modular concrete structures to inflatable fictions, these works explore the visceral need to carve out a space of one’s own.