Rolling Homes

If there’s not a nomadic revolution going on these days, there’s certainly a nomadic movement. In the last few years, either for reasons of practicality (high costs of rent or mortgages), change in lifestyle, or the search for adventure, people are customizing all sorts of vehicles for travel. If you search for “van” on Instagram, you find scores of accounts such as projectvanlife, with 1.2 million followers, vanlifecamper, 472,000 followers, or fosterhunting, 930,000 followers.

This book focuses on DIY vehicles, with most of the 50 or so shown here fitted out for the road by their owners, similar to the way that Shelter’s books on building feature hand-built homes. There are vans, sedans, trucks, buses, and trailers with a wide array of designs and styles. A number of the units are 4-wheel drive for off-road travel.

The book is not only fun to browse through, but is full of practical information (such as stoves, heaters, battery charging, refrigerators, and water pumps designed for the road) — for anyone wanting to create their own on-road home. There are dozens of floor plans, all sorts of sleeping arrangements, and some unique “stealth vehicles” — designed to be under the radar, so that passers-bys have no idea that someone is sleeping in a parked vehicle.

There is a European mini-van outfitted by a young German woman who just graduated from architectural school and took a sabbatical to go surfing. There are a number of camper truck shells, all completely different. There’s a converted school bus that is used in both cold weather for skiing, and in warm climates (such as Baja California) for surfing. There’s a converted horse trailer furnished with Victorian antiques that is used at Burning Man. There is a tiny Metro Geo (3-cylinder sedan) that is ingeniously designed for sleeping, cooking, and eating in the stealth mode.

In a way, this is a scrapbook. Most of the articles consist of stories and statistics, as well as photos sent in by Shelter’s network (built up over 50 years) of hands-on people. It’s not a book that was designed in advance, but rather a random and serendipitous collection from people in different parts of the world, almost all of whom believe in using their own hands to create their own shelters.