John Paananen: Suburban Tipi

Half-Finnish, half-Italian designer John Paananen was living in a yurt when he started brainstorming ideas for building a livable hybrid nomadic dwelling on site at his campus, the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He considered the question, “What would happen as a result of immobilizing the nomadic home with suburban values, materials and methods of construction?" Well, apparently, you get a yurt-igloo-tipi fusion. Paananen writes, "I imagined these holistically designed structures to blister or tumor in reaction to the disconnectedness, artificiality, environmental and social irresponsibility that suburbia is.”

That may be, but there is nothing unlovely about his creation. The structure measures 16 feet tall by 18 feet in diameter and yields 255 square feet of living space. Inside, Paananen decorated with modern furniture, wonderful nature reproductions, and held nighttime projections within the dome. And while it took 3 months to build, his home of 7 months was carefully deconstructed in just 3 hours by a three person crew. It was then transported by truck to be re-erected at a new location. It currently can be visited at AguaFina Gardens International in Sylvan Lake, Michigan.

Read more at Daily Tonic. You can see shots of his original yurt and the Suburban Tipi on his Flickr. [via Notcot]