Rustic is a timber building that folds for transport and unfolds on site. It leaves the factory finished inside, travels as a load 2.9 m wide and 2.9 m high, and opens into a house with a pitched roof in about an hour.

Rustic is made of 90 mm cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels insulated with wood fibre. It travels folded as three connected modules and is unfolded with a crane on site. In internal tests, recorded on video, we took a Rustic through 100 folding cycles.

A Rustic consists of three modules joined together: the Base module, the Roof module and the Dropout module. Folded, they form a compact box for the truck. Unfolded, the Roof module becomes the pitched roof and the Dropout module adds the second part of the floor area.

1. The folded building is lifted onto the foundation, set on the first six support points, levelled and fixed.
2. The crane raises the Roof module to 120–130°, and the team holds it on temporary props.
3. The Dropout module is pulled out sideways. Partway through, its centre of gravity shifts; the crane then takes the load from above and lowers the module onto the remaining six support points. This is the most demanding step, and the reason our own team always installs Rustic.
4. From inside, the team fits the corner posts and floor panels, lowers the roof into place and bolts the connecting beams.
5. Electricity, water and drainage are connected.

Folding for a move is the same sequence in reverse.

Structure. 90 mm three-layer cross-laminated timber panels covered by the European Technical Assessment ETA-14/0349.
Insulation. 50 mm STEICOflex 036 wood-fibre insulation, thermal conductivity 0.036 W/(m·K).
Joints. Sealed with our own jointing system, developed for repeated folding. We keep its details to ourselves.

ETA-14/0349 lists fire tests in which three-layer CLT walls reached REI 60 under a load of 35 kN/m: 100 mm walls without any cladding, and 80 mm walls with plasterboard. REI 60 means the wall kept its load-bearing capacity, integrity and insulation for 60 minutes. Rustic walls are 90 mm; calculations for a specific project are available on request.

By our calculation, a Rustic wall (90 mm CLT plus 50 mm wood fibre) has a U-value of about 0.44 W/(m²·K). That is less insulation than most northern European energy rules expect from a new permanent home. Rustic is designed for relocatable, medium-term use, and some rules are written for exactly this kind of building. In Germany:

Repeatedly erected and dismantled buildings. The Building Modernisation Act (GModG, formerly the Building Energy Act, GEG) does not apply, apart from §§ 74–78, to buildings intended to be repeatedly erected and dismantled (§ 2(2) No. 6). A folding building can fall under this exclusion.
Exemptions. Where the act does apply, the authority must grant an exemption on application if its aims are met to the same extent by other measures, or if its requirements would cause undue hardship in the individual case (§ 102).
Bavaria. Since 2023, the Bavarian building code says deviations from its requirements should generally be allowed, in particular for projects that trial new forms of building and living (Art. 63 BayBO). This covers the Bavarian building code, not federal energy law.

Many other countries have their own rules for temporary, relocatable or experimental housing. Before you order, ask a local architect or lawyer which of them apply to your site.

Every fold and unfold loads the connections and joints. To check the design, we folded and unfolded a Rustic 100 times in internal tests, recorded on video. Moving a Rustic means disconnecting it, folding it in reverse order and installing it again on a new foundation.

How delivery and installation work: From Factory to Unfolded. See Rustic.