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Since the interior space of an 8-by-40-foot box would have felt like a mine shaft, Humble and Egan cut it down to an 8-by-20-foot piece, then salvaged a 20-foot container from a previous project and joined them side-by-side, offset by six feet. This created a sleeping nook in one of the offset ends that's precisely filled by a double bed, and provided space at the other for a bathroom.

Interior walls are furred out with steel studs and spray-in foam insulation, and fir plywood screwed to the studs -- used plywood, salvaged from another building, with no pretense of prettying it up. Large swaths of the walls open out or slide away, becoming a floor-to-ceiling window on one side and a large sliding glass door on another. Fully opened up, the studio feels more like a pavilion than an enclosure, a minimalist shelter that falls somewhere between Thoreau's primitive cabin and Philip Johnson's pristine glass house. Closed up like a mechanical clam, it could be left alone for years without an owner's worrying about any of the usual threats to a weekend cabin. Fire, quake, wood rot, bugs, burglars -- it's as vulnerable as a boulder.

Aesthetically, this prototype will annoy, or possibly infuriate, more people than it fascinates. The contrast with its natural setting is stark, as jarring as a rusty chainsaw abandoned on a wilderness trail. But aesthetics aren't the point. As Humble puts it, "The idea is more important than the object. The underlying values that support and drive the object can change society."


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