Hesselink Guest Hut

In 1994 Wes Jones designed a living space that was meant to take up 360 acres of forest in a property located in High Sierra, California. The landscape of the area required the use of some sort of standard prefabricated device; something that would be strong, durable, inexpensive, and easily transportable by helicopter or truck. The answer to these needs was a shipping container.

The end result of this project was the Guest Hut, which were independant small cabins for guests, located in a forest environment. Each configuration of the container homes pertained to the environment in which it is situated. For example, the vertical elements that come from stacking the containers gives a sense of stability and security for a flat land region, where as in a steep and dangerous site the containers include overhanging elements that cover the rocky environment around. This special relationship that was designed for the building and its environment was a theory that Jones questioned later on regarding the primitive hut. He began to further question the relationship between the house and the wilderness. This inquiry of Jones was foreshadowing for his reflections on the primitive hut.

It is evident that the building has themes, such as industrial materials, that Jones uses later on in other projects, especially the primitive hut. The concept he had behind this project was very important to the transformation of the primitive hut. This project is also where the origin of the shipping container in his work came from. Jones learned the flexibilities and resourcefulness of the shipping container after working on this project, and therefore continued to stretch the object's use and design in later works.

"Hesselink Guest Hut / Container House, 1994." Frac Centre. Laurent Pinon, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.frac-centre.fr/collection/collection-art-architecture/index-des-auteurs/auteurs/projets-64.html?authID=100>.

sketch  done by Marisa Musing