Shelter Cookbook

An inspiring guide to the history and legacy of Lloyd Kahn's 1970s countercultural self-build manuals

DIY architect, publisher and pioneer of the self-build movement, Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is a legend of the American counterculture. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in 1968 Kahn started building geodesic domes, and was an editor for Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. In 1970 Kahn published his first book, Domebook One, followed the next year by the bestselling Domebook 2. In 1971, he bought land in Bolinas and built a geodesic dome (later to be featured in Life magazine), but he soon pursued other ways to build, resulting in the classic 1973 book Shelter. Kahn published numerous self-build books over the ensuing decades, most recently Tiny Homes on the Move (2014).
Shelter Cookbook is an exploration of Kahn’s now iconic publications by the Swiss architect Leopold Banchini (born 1981) —whose practice makes emphatic use of DIY architecture culture—and the German author and curator Lukas Feireiss (born 1977). It relates Kahn’s building philosophy to contemporary practices, recording Banchini and Feireiss’ personal search for unexpected relationships between historical documents and contemporary architectural projects. The large-format volume includes interviews, photospreads and archival material on self-building, and also includes a mycological investigation. Shelter Cookbook will inspire architects, designers, artists and counterculture cognoscenti alike with its positive vision of the possibilities and legacy of the self-build movement.