We are a traveling shelters company founded in 2020 by David and Mireia, with and for our kids Ina Joy and Kim. They were born abroad, during a five year journey in Australia and Denmark. Our purpose is raising them in love.
Your children change you forever. One day we started looking for beautiful huts they could play in, somewhere to hide, but couldn’t find none. So we decided to design some, which we are glad to share with all of you.
About us
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Shelters where children can create adventures, tiny structures they can build in play. We take the slow, long, winding way. While raising our kids, we don’t see childhood as an idyllic fairy tale realm of purity, but that contains as many if not more fears, nuances, make pretend and challenges than adult life. Fatherhood is often overwhelming and a struggle. It is from this reality that we provide children with a shelter of their own, where they can play, learn and roam freely -and invite us in.
Shelterhood is a quest for high quality architecture for and from children, and a tight technique about building by playing. An emotional place to dwell in and build the foundations of robust, brave and gentle spirits.
As the only love is true love, our mission is to create a company where everything is true. Here this truth can best be communicated through a particular kind of story: children’s tales.
Shelterhood is habitats smaller than a room. Shelterhood is for tramps, migrants and wanderers. Shelterhood is a condition and collective of shelters. Shelterhood is scandinavian design, mediterranean frugality and australian wilderness.
Our family of tiny habitats is playful and designed to travel. Our huts, tables, easy chairs, chairs and stools come in three sizes -for infants, children and grown-up kids. They are light but robust, ageing with you, becoming your kin’s companion for ten generations.
How could our shelters move along with us, both in time and space, from house to house, from town to town, from generation to generation, shifting and adapting to life’s changing needs?
Shelterhood is our answer to this question.
Principles
Building shelters is a primitive human need and skill. Our designs allow children to build and play with their own shelter where they can share real, physical adventures.
Playful
All our products are made to travel and keep you company in the different rooms, houses, towns and countries you will reside through life.
Nomadic
We source our wood from carefully selected forests only. The fabrication process minimises waste, and each part is built to last for ten generations.
Ecological
Forests
Ancestral huts originated in forests. Each part of our shelters has taken years to grow, inside trees, among many other trees, close to their mother and siblings. We know each ecosystem from which we harvest wood. We know the people taking care of them. We respect all its inhabitants.
Many great tales happen in forests. We bring a little piece of them to your home.
Each of our products is a journey, an exploration of the possibilities of a specific wood modified by and for play.
Process
Over the years we have developed a prototyping theory and method, that has grown in a feedback loop with all Shelterhood products and processes. We have implemented and improved this method in several research projects in international universities and institutions as well. It has proven fertile and adaptable to diverse design problems.
Prototyping
Chronology
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2012
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2012
It all started in 2012 when we recycled some plywood boards from a house we had lived in the mountains into the furniture for a house by the sea. It was the first time we ever used a CNC router. From the offcuts we made toys for our future kids.
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Sitting in these first chairs, in the summer of 2013, instead of going on holidays, we spent a month designing a family of small shelters. In order to do so we had to learn the basics of digital fabrication. A few months later we made our first 1:20 and 1:10 models, and 1:1 prototypes. We’ve been improving the designs ever since, but most importantly we have developed a methodology that allows us to constantly optimise the digital fabrication process. Although our shelter family is aimed to live indoors, we place all our prototypes on the outdoors to monitor their aging process under the elements. Before sharing a new model with you, we test it in our homes for at least two years, to make sure they will stand the test of time and misbehaving rascals.
In 2017 we relocated to Australia and we realised that these little shelters actually could fulfill the needs of thousands of expats and wanderers, who move from place to place, having to get new or second hand furniture every time. So instead of having to buy and sell furniture for each apartment or house, these shelters can move on with you and your kin, over the towns, continents, decades and generations.
In 2019 we migrated to Denmark, where learning from their strong design tradition and impecable manufacturing quality, we have refined our shelter family.
We keep improving the design and fabrication process, researching and developing innovative ways to source, make and send our products, by constantly prototyping them before bringing them to you.
