A home is not a house was an statement from 1969 by Reyner Banham, emphasizing the relevance of technology applied to dwelling forms. Part of Carmelo Rogríguez Cedillo’s on-going PhD research on Archaelogy of the Future, one of my favourite blogs, these pictures collect knowledge about distinct modes of nomad homes. An extremely appealing way of living, which has always been en vogue until today, but not as popular as in 1950-1960s.

In his futuristic architectural visions from the past, Rodríguez Cedillo focuses on Popular Science American publication featuring mobile dwellings, either fully or partly movable structures, between 1930s-1980s. He relates the prototypes from every decade to different contextual solutions. If in 1930s mobile homes were a solution for cheap housing, in the following decades they adopted the form of second dwellings for leisure picnic activities; they were followed by a general use as cheap modes for travelling, and lately in the 1990s to an envisioning hyper-technification of the object itself.

But his relevant point underlines that these popular publications were most of the times ahead of the architecture of the time. They not only introduced a revolutionary dwelling participative environment, but even encouraged readers to build their own lifepod, according to their personal tastes or needs. In 1954, a total of 1,700,000 Americans owned a mobile home.

[1> train as a dwelling from 1927 Vs. a mobile home from the 1960s via Arqueología del Futuro] [2-6> mobile homes published in Popular Science in 1941 - 1958 - 1964 - 1965 - 1971 - 1984 via Arqueología del Futuro]