08 Jan 2025
Attia Design unveils COCOON-Freelancer, a groundbreaking mobile living space crafted to embody the ideals of minimalism, sustainability, and independence, designed for modern professionals and adventurers.
Pure, chemical-free living
Merging innovative craftsmanship with timeless traditions, COCOON-Freelancer is constructed entirely from wood, free from chemical treatments, glue, and plastics, ensuring the purest indoor environment. This dedication to natural materials promotes a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, offering a sanctuary for those seeking refuge from conventional living.
Moon-wood inspired by tradition
Inspired by the enduring Alpine houses and Japanese temples that have stood for 500 to 1,500 years, COCOON-Freelancer integrates traditional craftsmanship with modern techniques. The use of moonwood timber, harvested in alignment with lunar cycles during the coldest months, when the sap flow is at rest and sugar content is lower, ensures optimal durability and resistance to insects, mould, and deformation. This method eliminates the need for chemical preservatives, enhances the wood’s value and quality over time, and produces 100% recyclable organic waste.
Drivable with standard B driving license
Weighing under 3.5 tons, including vehicle and luggage, the COCOON-Freelancer is designed for transport without requiring a special driving license. Its weight-optimized construction and minimalist, functional design make it an ideal choice for freelancers, creatives, and nomads seeking the joy, freedom, and flexibility of mobile living.
Transformable and efficient design
The interior features a transformative bed lounge and workspace, storage, an efficient TinyStove, a gas kitchen, and a stainless steel water system, with no plastic materials for a consistent organic pure space. Every element has been meticulously crafted to optimize functionality and usability,
making COCOON-Freelancer the ultimate versatile solution for living and working on the go.
Health and comfort benefits
Free release of harmful VOCs: The untreated wood ensures no harmful toxic emissions, promoting a long-term healthier indoor atmosphere.
Breathable walls: The untreated wood ensures constant drying, preventing mould and window fogging, enhancing air quality, and maintaining a fresh indoor environment.
Electrosmog shielding: Significantly enhances recovery and sleep. Using an RF meter, tests demonstrated that COCOON's wood walls and specialized windows blocked substantial EMF radiation. In urban environments, typical readings exceed 10,000 μW/m² on the street, and 2,500 μW/m² in apartments, classified as extreme. Inside COCOON, levels drop below 50 μW/m², providing safe and optimal living conditions.
Natural daylight rhythm: Facilitates a natural sleep-wake cycle, promoting well-being and regulating hormones.
Weather protection:
Technical features
Integrated dilatation joints: The vivid wood can expand and contract without compromising its fixed dimensions, ensuring freedom of movement and stability in all conditions, while preventing cracking.
The geometry of the body, door, windows, and cuts is designed to distribute loads evenly and minimize stress, ensuring stability and resistance to torsion during transport.
The light safety vacuum glass achieves an exceptional insulation value of 0.7 W/m²K, matching the performance of standard 44 mm triple-layer glass, while being 6 times thinner and lighter at just 7.7 mm. This innovative design combines superior energy efficiency with space and weight advantages.
The exterior facade can be renewed to maintain its aesthetic and protective qualities over time.
The complete interior is secured with hand-tightened nuts, allowing it to be disassembled without tools and designed for unloading by a single person.
Roof made from solar panels capable of generating over 900W, 37.5V, and 24A.
Testament to sustainability
AttiaDesign’s commitment to sustainability is at the heart of COCOON-Freelancer. From the careful selection of materials to the innovative design and construction methods, every detail reflects a deep respect for nature and a vision for a more sustainable future.
Awards and recognition
AMP Architecture MasterPrize 2024: Honorable Mention in Architectural Design - Transportation.
BLT Built Design Awards 2024: Honorable Mention in Interior Design.
Technical Information:
The COCOON journey
Maruan Attia, originally from Ibiza, Spain, began his journey as an Industrial Designer in Munich, Germany, collaborating with premium brands like Audi, Leica, Hinterher, and others. Surrounded by the idyllic Alps, Maruan found inspiration in the warm, wooden architecture of traditional mountain huts. In stark contrast to the cooler, harder, standard architecture of Munich and his Mediterranean homeland, these wooden structures exuded a natural, human-friendly quality that resonated deeply with him and made him feel attracted to the region.
Through an interview in 2016, Maruan discovered the sophisticated work of Erwin Thoma and Holz100 in Austria. These moon-wood wooden houses were consistently built without glue or chemical treatments, using traditional harvesting techniques with the highest standards of purity, health, safety, energy efficiency, and sustainability. Prefabricated and assembled into complete houses within days, these designs had a global demand. Maruan delved deeper into their literature and projects and, by 2018, he visited the Thoma company to immerse himself in their philosophy, experiencing living in the "Baumhaus" for a weekend. This visit solidified his commitment to embracing and contributing to this visionary lifestyle for future innovations and designs.
When the pandemic hit in 2019, Maruan was forced to channel his capacities into improving his projects, including the Q-RACK station with an eBike charging module. He also began pursuing his visionary project, COCOON—a mobile wood house as an alternative to standard caravans, which he found uninspiring and unsustainable. His goal was to create a mobile space that surpassed the comfort of any home or hotel, independent of any vehicle and its lifespan. He envisioned a weight-optimized, wood-based design on the Thoma moondhouse principle compatible with standard flatbed trucks, prioritizing material, health, minimalism, and sustainability instead of the usual multifunctional high-tech vans.
After facing initial scepticism from partners, Maruan connected with Schreinerei Weidlich in 2021, the only expert capable of crafting walls that met the required thickness, stability, and weight. This collaboration resulted in three years of intensive development, culminating in a prototype tested over a 9,000 km journey through Europe, from the Swiss Alps to Ibiza’s hidden beaches. The COCOON-Freelancer demonstrated exceptional climate comfort, maintaining cool interiors in summer and warmth in winter. The success of the journey led to further refinements, with future production focusing on exclusive Swiss pine for enhanced performance.
