With almost four million entries under the tag #cabin only on instagramand more of billion views on TikTok, it is not surprising that this phenomenon is one of the main obsessions of the internet. But, let us start at the beginning. Since the Stone Age, cabins have been part of the history of mankind; it is the most primitive and essential facet of the human being, connecting him with nature and the earth. In the 1st century, Vitruvius, Julius Caesar’s architect during the Roman Empire and author of the oldest architectural treatise known, introduced the concept that exists today of the cabin, defining the refuge in nature to disconnect.
Henry David Thoreau, back in the 19th century, has made everyone yearn to have a Walden experience once in a lifetime ever since. Escape from the routine or the city and connect the loneliness of man with the forest: that is the key. “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately; just face the facts of life and see if I could learn what she had to teach,” he would write in his diary. They have been a myth in literature and art, extolling the idea of the writer’s cabin, that little refuge where ink can be unleashed. Many of the great works of Thoreau himself, Gustav Mahler or Virginia Woolf were written in farmhouses or wooden shelters.
In cabins to think, Eduardo Outeiro Herreño (Luis Seoane Foundation, 2011) and various authors reflect on the relationship between intimacy, creativity and the natural spaces of writers, musicians or architects throughout history. It has also been a challenge for architects such as Le Corbusier, who in the fifties of the last century conceived Le Cabanon, his small palace on the French coast, as he called it —today one of his projects recognized by UNESCO—. But it is with the birth of the internet that the cabins become a symbol of aspiration for most of those who live between cement and asphalt.
Cabin Porn, the Bible
In 2009, the year of the boom of social networks, when WhatsApp was a technological baby and Instagram did not yet exist, it was Facebook and MySpace that dominated digital conversations and Tumblr was consolidated as the main platform for microblogging. And right there, in that breeding ground prior to the I like it and the emoji, Zach Klein, CEO of Dwell and co-founder of Vimeo, decided to create a space for one of his great passions: cabins in the woods. thus was born Cabin Porn, the precedent of the Red cabañil movement and the main culprit of the obsession with small wooden houses. With more than 10 million visits to its website per month, a revolution began that today floods the Internet, virtually disconnecting while doing scrollwishing to be in a wooden house from the other side of the screen.
In 2016, Cabin Porn made the leap to the publishing world and published its first book, curated by Klein and selecting the best of the best from more than 12,000 cabins that filled the web at the time. In 2019, they launched Cabin Porn Inside, a second volume dedicated to interior design and which consolidated the movement beyond the internet. From Taschen to Gestalten, major publishers have turned this phenomenon into a bestseller, sitting on most shelves. instagrammed of the world.
Around this cabañil euphoria have been born applications like Nosily either CampNight who want to transform our productivity and sleep by simulating life in the heart of the forest. Also projects like the cabin club either The Cabin Land they explore that territory from a more traveler and lifestyle-focused point of view. Even in fashion and decoration, where the famous cottagecore either cabin core They have carved a niche for themselves, creating an aesthetic and a visual style around the rural world that idealizes life in the countryside.
Flee the city after the pandemic
But if the internet has been fascinated with cabins for more than 10 years, why are we now obsessed with living in one? “During the lockdown, people stopped and then we had a moment to think. We live full of mechanized habits and in a society of rules”, comments psychologist Ruth Zazo. “When we stopped, we began to consider what to do with our lives and to realize that we had to get out of the routine and the norm. We adapt to a change of scenery and we begin to have a different concept of housing”, she continues, “we want to enjoy and the space in which we live acquires a sense of pleasure that did not exist before”.
After the 2020 lockdown, cabin searchesrentals of wooden houses and construction of prefabricated houses they tripled compared to previous years. Suddenly, something had changed: the pandemic took the world out of the productive and stressful loop it was in, and fueled the desire to drop everything and go back to the field. Cities like Madrid or Barcelona have been losing inhabitants in the last three years. The materialization of that aspiration of the cabin becomes more tangible with the exodus from the city that has been leading the search for open spaces connected to nature.
However, this movement has nothing to do with the Great Resignation or Great Resignation, although that flight from the cities looks like it, and which has caused an avalanche of workers in the United States to leave their jobs. It is a much more internal and intimate attachment, a return to the roots that hits the reset button to make people aware of their surroundings. “The pandemic has taught us that we can live better, that we can take control of our lives,” says Zazo, who assures that now “small houses do not make sense, and teleworking allows us to live in friendlier areas, with more freedom. and oxygen”.
Living in FOMO territory (Fear Of Missing Out Something, the fear of missing something) and exposing lives on Instagram without any limitations, it is time to connect with nature and forget the imposed productivity that often turns people into machines. Ultimately, the phenomenon #cabin it is nothing more than the awareness of returning to the beginning, resuming the quiet life of our ancestors.
But long before the pandemic and that reconciliation with nature, after months locked up inside four walls, in 2015 the Getaway website was born, with that thought of meeting in balance with the environment when going on vacation. Getaways two hours from any city that sought to recharge their batteries and reconnect with the sound of the wild, at a time when cities were growing more and more and the countryside was emptying. More recently, Airbnb, echoing the new trends in travel around the world after confinement, has redesigned the entire experience of its vacation rentals, giving greater visibility to accommodation of this type with its curator of unique spaces. Tree houses in Italy, alpine chalets in Switzerland or rustic cabins in Finland miles away from cities are some of the examples that this is a business in full expansion and that, in reality, it has only just begun. That is why, as Henry David Thoreau said, you have to go to the forest to live deliberately because you did not want to live what was not life.
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