Ideas and inspirations, nomadic design projects and products to meet the new lifestyles, from home to work, of a generation in constant movement.
Ideas and products in nomadic design are becoming increasingly common – from homes to furniture, from everyday objects to wearable accessories. Some are realistic, others experimental or forward-looking, conceived for urban and digital nomads, a new category of young potential consumers. They combine analogue and digital functions: interconnected, agile, lightweight, transportable. Suited to people in constant movement.
An urban nomad is someone who can carry their office in a backpack, who feels at home anywhere, who lives in the present to shape the future, according to the definition given by the German design group Kancha.
The urban nomad moves from one metropolis to another without a fixed workplace or a home. Despite everything, urban nomadism appears to be a temporary and provisional condition, characteristic of a privileged niche of adults aged between 25 and 40, from Western, and therefore industrialised, countries, who choose this lifestyle for a limited period. Only rarely does it become a permanent status.
The digital nomad, unlike the urban nomad, does not necessarily move from one city to another. Their defining characteristic is a preference for isolated locations far from urban settlements, where they can live and work in peace and quiet. The necessary and indispensable condition, as the definition suggests, is having a powerful and reliable internet connection (and why not, a free one). Their goal is to be able to work on a remote island in Southeast Asia or the Pacific just as they would in Milan or New York. Like the urban nomad, they also travel light, with carry-on luggage and the most up-to-date technological devices.
San Francisco-based startup Nomadpass, in the United States, is tapping into this already widespread trend in America, as well as the growing tendency among companies to offer employees the benefit of working remotely from other parts of the world for a period of time, by providing personalised solutions to find the best places to live, work remotely and meet other digital nomads to exchange ideas with.
Alongside the nomad as a person, the concept of home has also changed, evolving by drawing on tradition. The nomadic home is by its very definition mobile and suited to travel. Foldable, lightweight, quick to assemble and disassemble – just like the Tuareg tent or the yurt of Kyrgyz shepherds. In more recent times, wheels were added to the mobile home, giving rise to caravans and campervans. The home is a subject that has always fascinated designers, who have tackled the most imaginative design solutions for how to take one's home along.
The ideas have often proved too conceptual and have rarely found real-world application, becoming instruments for highlighting unresolved social problems such as the high cost of housing, the lack of green spaces in cities, and the bureaucratic difficulties involved in building and renovating a home.
Neo-nomadism: a tendency to respond to the fluidity of contemporary capitalism by creating spaces, relationships and objects of a hybrid and flexible nature
Emblematic in this regard is the Tricycle house and garden project, presented by the People's architecture office (Pao) in 2012, which drew attention to the fact that no one in China owns the land on which they live, meaning that theoretically anyone could take possession of someone else's home. Pao conceived a tiny house with a garden on wheels, transportable by bicycle. Made of folded polypropylene that allows it to expand, it is equipped with a sink, a bathtub, a hob and transformable furnishings. The lightweight, translucent material makes it possible to enjoy natural light during the day and the city's exterior lights at night. Ideal, it seems, for a young couple.
A distinguished forerunner of contemporary nomadic furnishing is the celebrated bed-trunk created by Louis Vuitton in 1874 for the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, at a time when travel was the privilege of the few. Drawing inspiration from that philosophy, with elegant irony, the luxury maison today has a collection called 25 objets nomades, made up of limited editions and experimental prototypes designed by well-known international designers such as Marcel Wanders, Patricia Urquiola, the Campana brothers, India Mahdavi and Tokujin Yoshioka: from an indoor hammock to a finely crafted lounger, a rocking chair and an elegant stool, all strictly foldable. High-quality handcrafted pieces made with precious materials and finishes that are, in truth, nomadic in name only, and will in all likelihood be displayed to their best advantage in the most sophisticated private homes.
When it comes to personal objects, the backpack is the ultimate symbol of travel and nomadic life. Moleskine enlisted New York street artist Bradley Theodore to customise the backpack designed by designer Giulio Iacchetti, which members of the public were also able to personalise virtually during Design week.
Then there are shoes. Vibram, the Italian company that manufactures rubber soles for footwear, has developed a prototype designed by mechanical engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison capable of harvesting energy while walking and recharging a smartphone. The Vibram Hero shoe was created in 2015 in collaboration with InStep NanoPower, an American company specialising in the development of nanotechnology-based solutions in the renewable energy sector, which holds the patent.
Already on sale, however, are the minimalist Vibram Furoshiki shoes, "the soles that wrap the foot", a name derived from the Japanese art of wrapping objects in cloth. They too belong to the world of nomadic design objects: perfect as travel shoes, extremely lightweight, they fold in on themselves and can be carried in a very compact bag. Strictly in the backpack.
The Design nomade exhibition held at Base in Milan during Design week in April 2017 addressed precisely the theme of design's transformation in the age of neo-nomadism.
On display were objects and forward-looking ideas responding to the new needs of flexible lives: from To Many Places, Emmy Polkamp's pop-up hotel, to Waterbed, Daniel Durnin's home on water, a backpack that doubles as an armchair, a bed that floats on water, and much more. The proposals generated ideas and inspirations around the possible impact of remote working, and brought words such as cloud computing, coworking, freelancing and frequent travelling into the mainstream — terms that, by entering the vocabulary of young people, also influence forms, materials, interfaces and traditional design.