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Olson Kundig Architects’ Weathered Steel Cabin Makes a Burly Retreat

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This no-nonsense manly huntin’ and fishin’ retreat from Olson Kundig Architects really gets the job done. It is just a one-man weekend retreat that can be completely closed up tight during the week.

The gigantic steel front – left to weather naturally – just rolls across the front to cover the one window. The architects left the lettering on it as an authentic mark of its history.

Doors are constructed of the same sturdy steel and also clamp tight when closed-up, and take some strength to open. The solidity of having to pull the doors closed was part of why the cabin won a Residential Architecture Award this year for “the idea of this shell that you peel back when you’re in the house.” Another judge noted that closing the door “is a viscerally felt activity that makes you feel what it’s like to be there and then go away.”

Constructed with this type of solid rolled steel joist girders and sheets of steel just left to weather naturally on the exterior, this brutally simple one-room cabin makes the perfect retreat from namby-pamby civilization.

Everything is extremely crude and elemental. The proximity of the toilet to the bed is almost as brutal as the interior design sensibility found in prison cell architecture.

Need ventilation? Just leave both the doors open. Need to wash? The shower is right out there in the glorious outdoors with no worries about offending the neighbors whatsoever. But that’s OK. There’s no neighbors to offend. Only bears…