In 1845 philosopher and poet Henry David Thoreau famously retreated to a cabin in the woods—a one-room cottage by Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts—to clear his head. Mark Twain, similarly, often holed up in his writing hut on the campus of Elmira College in upstate New York. And Roald Dahl found fantastical inspiration in a small structure in southeast England he called Gipsy House. Cabins—diminutive structures that provide a place of escape—have long served as dreamy refuges for creative minds.
Now Cabins (Taschen, $70) explores the modern architect’s twist on the historic hideaway with properties from the likes of Terunobu Fujimori, Tom Kundig, and Renzo Piano. An Austrian mountain cabin in rough-hewn concrete is a monument to modernism in the snow. A dwelling atop a drawbridge in the Netherlands overlooks boats as they pass along the Pius Harbor in Tilburg. A long and skinny contemporary tree house in Portugal made of wood and slate riffs on the primitive hut. And in Italy, a prefabricated white-fiberglass structure brought in by plane and assembled atop Mount Elbrus (12,834 feet above sea level) resembles a space-age shelter.
Click to see a selection of structures featured in Cabins.
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