REF-02img/ns1.jpg · NS-1 below the cliff band
An all-electric, off-grid trailer built to answer whether a person could carry the conditions for a good life with them.
Can everything a person needs — power, water, heat, shelter, connection — fit inside one object they can tow?
It began as a senior design project at CU Boulder's Program of Environmental Design and ended as a company with press, a composite manufacturing partnership, and trailers in the field. In between it was a shed I built in my backyard so that I could build the thing the shed was for.
The decision that set the whole direction was the cooktop. Choosing induction over propane meant the trailer had to be fully electric, which meant the battery had to be large, which meant the roof had to be solar, which meant the body had to be light, which meant composite. One choice about how you make dinner determined the entire architecture. I have never had a cleaner demonstration that a product is a chain of consequences hanging off a single early decision.
Then we put a satellite dish on it, and the last constraint on living anywhere quietly disappeared.
