My regular readers will instantly realize how excited I am to have found this portable emergency shelter tonight on Dornob. This design concept is called the Room-Room and was designed by Encore Heureux and G studio. It is intended to be a portable emergency shelter; but I see it as evidence that a bike-towed tiny house is a viable idea.
Now for the real evidence. See this video on Tiny House TV.
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I like the basic concept, but am I the only one who thinks this design is unwieldy? I don’t get why it has to be carried upside down. Did you see in the video where it lifted the guy off the ground when he flipped it over? Seems like it would be better to design it so that so that it remains upright and have the wheels fold up while using it and fold back down while transporting it. Just my 2 cents. 🙂
I agree Tim. It is nice to see how easy a giant structure like this could be pulled by a bike though. I would hate to try it in high wind though. I think the aerodynamic shape of the teardrop will work much better.
Any good design is equal parts engineering, art, and esperimentation. Judging from the photoshoped images, at least one is missing.
But I do like the flipping design. You don’t need to make the wheels stong enough to support a person, just the selter itself. Having seperate layouts for sleeping and use is also quite a interesting take.
I would really like to see someone take this to an extreme and acutally try on of these ideas… I wonder how hard it would be to create a good bike camper. Perhaps if you fleshed out your bike pulled teardrop, Michael. ^_^
Are we aware of this? http://bikeportland.org/2006/11/28/motorhome-bike-guy-needs-our-help/
After running into the above person some years back in one of several articles written about him, I’ve thought a lot about this concept.
I think, firstly, that it would be much better to have the bike separable from the minihome thing. So kudos to the French guys for that much. But after examining this idea from many different angles, ultimately, I decided that it didn’t make much sense to go this route. A tent is a much more practical structure in a rural environment (weight, wind resistance, etc.), and in an urban one, well, I just don’t want to do this in an urban environment. Ever consider that someone could come along, lock you inside and haul you off? Or maybe they just want to pull you out, beat you up and rob you.
And let’s think about traffic. This guy can’t see traffic approaching him from behind. AND the wind will blow him all over the road. AND in the US finding roadways where this structure wouldn’t make for some dangerous situations would be difficult.
On a more practical level, if one wanted to go with a hard sided structure like this (as opposed to a tent), a foldable structure would be much safer and would provide much less wind resistance.
I dream about being able to ride a bike the way I used to when I was a kid, but it’s just not safe in much, if not most of the US. It’s a damn shame really.
downs… thanks for the link. I have seen a bike like that but it might be a different guy. Totally cool though. I also like your comments about mobility and how tents are probably more practical. I think the advantage of a house is that it could theoretically be locked up and secure. Many homeless people have to haul their possessions with them everywhere which make a lot of thinks more difficult. If they had a lockable mobile shelter that could be left someplace safe, like maybe a homeless shelter parking lot (???) maybe they would be able to more easily make the transition out of homelessness. Not sure if I’m right… but that’s one of the key reasons I’m thinking that a bike pullable tiny house makes some sense. (that and peak oil of course 🙂
Hey Michael,
I once saw a design for a homemade car top camper (yes, car top) in a Popular Mechanics book from the 50s or 60s. It was really cool. It was a roughly 4×8 box, 1 foot deep, that rode on top of the car. When you were ready to camp, you’d fold up one half of the roof, then the other, then the two walls to form a sort of hard-sided A-frame tent. Then you’d climb a ladder and just sleep on top of the car. This would be pretty cool to adapt to bike use. If you made the basic box 2-3 ft. deep you could easily carry cargo, possessions, whatever, and would have headroom enough to stand up.
Another possibility is something I can’t for the life of me find a picture of. But I have seen this design for a pull behind car camper. Basically, it’s two boxes 3-4 feet deep. The bottom box nests inside the upper box, and at night the top half gets cranked up to form a habitable structure. Low wind resistance is the idea, of course. This too would be a good idea for a bike camper.
Why do all the people in the picture have to be asian, indian or black
Where’s the video? I clicked and it said the domain is up for grabs.
found the car top camper. =] http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.com/2013/08/wouldnt-it-be-tempting-to-try-tiny-fold.html
and the video is here. http://dornob.com/portable-potential-mobile-urban-emergency-housing-idea/