A closer look at The Backcountry Hut Company's System 02 prefab cabins, a BLT Design Award winner

Today, we’re taking a closer look at this year's BLT Design Awards winner in the Construction Product Design of the Year category, System 02, from the Vancouver-based team at The Backcountry Hut Company and Leckie Studio Architecture + Design.

Their prefabricated System 02 cabin kit can be assembled in four to six weeks using a modular system comprised of 185-square-foot individual modules that can be combined to deliver a variety of different living configurations. The materials used are also marketed as helping bolster resilience in colder climates. 

To date, their cabin designs have been completed in about 25 places throughout the U.S. and Canada. The firm is framing each as a "significant leap forward" and a showcase of the potential for modular design in remote locations.

Wilson Edgard, a co-founder of The Backcountry Hut Company, thanked his friend and Leckie Studio’s principal Michael Leckie for providing his expertise. Leckie had previously spoken to Archinect for a 2018 Small Studio Snapshot interview in which he credited Dieter Rams’ "less but better" ethos as an inspiration for such designs, which have thus far ranged in size from 691 to 1,826 square feet.

"The original idea was to assist individuals and organizations in the design and construction of affordable small-scale recreational structures. [...] DIY architecture sounds like a relatively simple and straightforward idea. However, it is antithetical to the conventional construction process and therefore much more challenging in practice," he added after stating the idea for the cabins was born out of a two-year concept development process.

Likewise, the kit-of-parts approach has applications in the delivery of affordable alternative housing solutions in higher-rent areas such as Vancouver. In this regard, it helps to enshrine what Leckie says is a "kind of democratic socialist ideal" for architecture. The products starts at approximately $160,000 online. The Backcountry Hut Company also won a Canadian Architecture Award of Merit for Architecture in 2016.