re: Definition

Soundtrack: Play while reading!

A frenzy of activity this week. I'm relocating soon, and I've decided to put the new roof on before I do. This is going to involve a bit of structural tweaking. So big changes both to the rig itself and to the nature of the project. I want to engage the community in this project and so I'm looking for a way to involve others in the process. There is a message that I am campaigning for here: a comfortable and beautiful space can come in many forms, and is accessible to those who seek it. Obviously I identify completely with the tiny house movement in that living in small spaces is a way to simplify life and live debt free. This is why I have been making such big changes to this trailer instead of 'fixing it up'.

This project is about redefining campers. But Forrest, you might be saying, if you're going to start fresh, it could be anything on wheels. Which is true. Maybe what I should do is list what defines campers to me and talk about what I can change about it. I'll present some conceptions and then counter with my own transconception. I'm making this word up. the prefix trans- means across, beyond or into a different state. I don't really want to respond in the negative to all conceptions of trailers and campers but rather pass through them and mutate them. After all, the reason I bought this moneypit in the first place was that the idea is already a good one. 

*(Also I keep throwing around the words camper, trailer, etc. and there seems to be a distinction in the market. What I believe I have is a travel trailer, but it could also be known as a camper.)

Conception 1: Campers are shoeboxes. They are rectilinear and shorter than they are long. To me this is quite boring and a simplistic design choice. Especially since a flat roof has other problems that we'll dissect later. One exception is the Airstream, which is obviously an iconic American design. Coincidentally, Hawley Bowlus who designed the Airstream also designed the Spirit of St. Louis, the craft that took Charles Lindberg across the Atlantic. But the Airstreams didn't become an icon by trying their hardest to play dead and be boxes. 

Transconception:  Mutation is an absolute in the evolutionary process. A major mutation involves a change of form. Change the form and the whole starts to change.

Conception 2: Campers are for vacations. They have all the comforts of home but not in an authentic way. It's okay for your vacation shack to be plasticked over and laminated and veneered because you don't live there full time. They have what you need for dwelling but don't harbor authenticity for long. They have plenty of drawers and cupboards for things but what things do you need in the vacation life?

Transconception: Elegant habitation usually involves stripping things away to allow for the craft of the space to shine. Like Le Corbusier said "Space light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep" I want to create clean lines and well defined spaces rather than a clutter of generic 'storage'. I'll also bring light in intentional ways. 


Conception 3: Campers let you go into nature and keep nature out. 


Transconception: I've realized the potency of the camper concept while living in Westford. Essentially you have a platform and shelter and are sitting lightly on a piece of land. It is a different way to live surrounded by  nature. I want to create the biophilic camper which invites nature in and is filled with growing plants, moving water, and glowing light. Don't expect me to get rid of the screens and let the mosquitoes in, however. I understand the value of living with living things we find pleasurable. Still, I think that the space can be alive and working and almost breathing. 


Since I have to go materials hunting, I'll leave these three for now. This feels like a good way to re-define the project so I'll be back with more. 


Roof goes on tomorrow!

minipost: Posts

The element in question is leaning against that hemisphere.

These mini-posts will be a place to dump pics and share construction and design details. This one just happens to be about posts. 

As I mentioned I'm reframing and adding structure to throw on the new roof. The new roof just happens to be irregular and funky. Not only that but it has to join to the frame of the trailer (1.5 x 4 channel steel). All the connections have to be strong enough to travel on the road but flexible enough to go over a bridge

From the ground up, first connection is on to the steel frame. I decided a straight up weld would be rigid and that there isn't much support provided by the frame. In a simple box frame, any damage to the integrity could be very bad. Plus I didn't have resources to weld where I was. I decided to go with bolting it on, using the sway bar towing connection as a model.  

Bolting around the frame seemed like a solid option, plus if I or the next owner ever wants to make any structural changes, deconstruction will be easier. So I decided to have the post footed by this setup. 

For the post itself, I went with a combination of steel 1 x 2 x 1/8 U-channel acting as the spine for a 2x10 power laminated timber. That way I got the rigidity and true angles of the steel and the compressive strength of the power lam. 

The challenge was joining those awkward 22 & 12.75 degree angles on the roof frame to upright posts. The frame is really an awning off a restaurant (Tex-Mex of course) and came with this rod and clamp which I believe is where the canvas was fastened on. Those clamps seemed like a good way to join to the steel tube without a weld, but they were still coming down at awkward angles. 

For the metal work, I went to Ethan Clew at Clew's Machining  in South Burlington, VT. We cut angle iron to match the angle of the tube (relative to the ground plane) and welded that rod onto its axis. that way the clamps still form the connection and are even adjustable. 

The angle iron bolts on to the top plate of the post and is thus adjustable on 2 axes (to change the angle a shim could be inserted and the clamps are adjustable. 

The final result of the steel work looks like this: 

The 2 x 10 will be inserted into the channel and screwed on with drill screws on the vertical and top. 

Westford days

What is Duration, but the persevering of a thing in its existence?

                                                         Gale Crt. Gentiles IV. 287(1677)

Things are going to start moving fast soon. I spent the last couple of weeks carefully ripping out particleboard and fiberglass bats. What I found underneath was sometimes  living and breathing. Mold and spiders had taken up residence and I had to evict them. But after all of the gutting, I'm now down to the unfortunately cheap studs and aluminum skin. I feel a bit like I'm peeling back the facade and left with the dwarf behind the curtain instead of the Wizard. But then I remembered why I got into this, and I kept ripping away. 

It does bring up the notion of the Ship of Theseus paradox, and whether replacing all the components of a system makes it a new system or if it retains its thingness. Although I'm really not much for high-mindedness these days, and as I mentioned before, this is really about the process for me. So yes the concept and even the thing retains meaning so I'm going to treat it as the same Wilderness 3000 I started out with. Some parts of it need a little help, however. One of the things that did in the de-con process was to cut pieces out in their biggest possible form so maybe I can re-use them. This probably made this step take 2x as long, but hopefully it will have some payback.

A word on materials. Since my budget is so limited, I've made a conscious decision to use almost exclusively recycled materials. This either means free, scrap, or making use of places like re-build (http://www.rebuildvt.org/rebuild/Building_Materials). This means that what I am able to find defines the project in a big way. I made my biggest materials acquisition recently in the way of an old awning off a Burlington tex-mex joint. I'd been looking for something to make for a new arched roof structure, and it just kind of showed up in such a fortuitous way when I was scanning the scrap yard. 

Quite the ask and ye shall receive moment. Steel and aluminum frames. I know just from the quality of the welds and embedded material costs that these things weren't cheap. I snatched the pair up for $100. 

Now I've been working on integrating them into the design.

Its been a great creative challenge to merge two existing objects into a new mutation. Its a bit like playing at matchmaker, looking for the two to have a pretty baby. Note, the 'clamshell' awnings are split down the middle and aren't actually attached to the angled awning. This image below is the current offspring which uses the angled awning as a sort of warped Conestoga wagon or broken greenhouse roof. The clamshells almost suggest half of an observatory. 

On the home front, I am still sleeping on the floor. The rig is 5 miles from town and 15 miles from the big town. The lack of facilities is draining, so I'm looking forward to getting to somewhere more domestic, as it will be a while before I get to plumbing in the trailer. 

Speaking of facilities, I've been having ideas about the bathroom and kitchen that I will incorporate into the design. I want to combine the shower and toilet functions in away that is usable and not gross. This ingenious Japanese design comes from the Paco 3x3x3 cube house where the toilet and shower are tucked into the floor and revealed by lifting up a panel.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/plant-furniture-from-moss-rugs-79463 Having noticed these pages pop up on design blogs around the web, I decided that I would take it a step further and corporate moss into the shower. 

That's probably enough for now, but I'll post again soon with more big concept renderings.

The Why

Last summer, I bought a camper. I went to the bank, withdrew 1600 dollars in cash, and with the money in my sweaty palm, went off to follow the craigslist trail. Like the Oregon Trail only with fewer snakebites and cholera outbreaks, this particular one took me to an old Vermont  boy, Lucien who takes up time and makes a slender buck fixing up RV's and campers. Exhibit A for the defense is a 18 foot Fleetwood Wilderness 3000 from a year which remains TBD.

Maybe I had  become a little fed up with paying the coffer-busting Burlington rent. Maybe I was inspired by the tiny house movement and people who were setting an intention to live with less. Certainly I had always dreamed about a little cabin in the woods to call my own. Really, the thought of having a 'project' gives me a warm nauseous glow in the bottom of my gut that I associate with excitement. The Fleetwood didn't really care about  my reasons. It just sat there with all its frilly curtains and stinking water tanks and linoleum.

So I tore up to Burlington to finish my schooling. Tearing up isn't at all accurate, when the rig led by my Ford Ranger takes hills at a blistering 45 clicks and the brakes squeal to a halt going down the Burlington hill. Still it moves, and that's something. I thought about the Tropical Storm which had destroyed so many homes in Vermont the day before and couldn't help but think there might really be something to having a house on wheels.

I posted up at a park with the Quebecois campers by Lake Champlain. When I went down to the lake to bathe I saw that the party wagon had already unloaded all it's passengers at the beach. I ran into my old neighbor from the dorms and of course the conversation goes to where we're living. I tell the truth. "Right here at the park for now." He looks incredulous or at least amused.

For a while I lived in a friends driveway on a busy street in the bad part of town. She was nice enough to let me use her shower and bathroom. But eventually I felt like my valuables weren't entirely safe behind the small lock.

Eventually I found the spot out 15 miles north of town. Found that a guy I knew as a former student in a class I TA'ed would let me set up shop on his land. It took me out of things a little bit but then I had the little house on the prairie. No running water. No hookups or facilities. The camper just sitting proudly with its electric umbilical cord. All-in-all it worked well. Went to classes and surfed on couches and generally did a lot of running back and forth. Sometimes though I would just ride my bike back to the camper and find something golden there: solitude. Now although I left to get a room in town for a semester, I am back and remembering what peace of mind this lifestyle can afford.

There is a certain type of joy known only to those who create things. The satisfaction of making lies less in the outcome than the process. Not to say there isn't a certain joy from cutting angles and seeing them come together just right, or the pleasure you get from sinking a single screw. But look at the longer timeline and it becomes really apparent why work is so important to happiness. Some intrepid rodent experimenters once raised a beaver completely in captivity. Eventually when it came of age they put some sticks in the room and played a cassette tape with the sound of water rushing. Even with no experience of rivers or trees it instinctively started to stack. Damn, man, beavers dam.

People design. It's really what we're good at. We're like beavers, constantly changing the environment to work for us. Even agriculture is more or less about keeping the bugs and disease and other plants out and the nutrients in. It's just another design. Design is the process that connects means and ends. We want to bypass the unnecessary process of getting up to turn on the lights (ends) so we make the clap-on-clap-off the clapper (means). This is the dynamic of how we live in the world. Evidence is everywhere. People need to work and do to satisfy that desire for making. And its really a joyful, useful thing..