Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever traces the course of the cabin in Canada and the United States – from the simple architecture of colonial settlements to contemporary interpretations feverishly circulated across the Internet – showing how this humble architectural form has been appropriated for its symbolic value and helped shape a larger cultural identity. The title is borrowed from the idiomatic expression for an anxious state of mind resulting from a prolonged stay in a remote or confined space. But it also plays upon the more consumer-driven definition of “fever:” a contagious, usually transient, fascination with an object of desire. Acknowledging the pervasive influence of this typology, Cabin Fever offers a historical survey of the cabin in North America over the past three centuries. Heavily illustrated, it is composed of a selection of notable literature, excerpted texts and iconic images that chronicle the long history of writing and visual documentation of the cabin. The publication follows a tripartite structure – Shelter, Utopia and Porn – that maps the formal evolution of the cabin typology within a changing set of social and cultural desires. Additional content includes a typological narrative of twenty selected buildings that collectively trace the development of the cabin from rudimentary shelter to technologically sophisticated retreat and a survey of art that recognizes the cabin as a subject with enduring and complex connotations.

Cabin Fever was published in conjunction with Cabin Fever, an exhibition organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Jennifer M. Volland, Bruce Grenville and Stephanie Rebick, and presented from June 9 to September 30, 2018.

Edited by Jennifer M. Volland, Bruce Grenville and Stephanie Rebick
Essays by Edward Abbey, Margaret Atwood, James Benning, W.E.B. DeBois, Walker Evans, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Dorothea Lange, Michael Pollan, Rudolph Schindler, Julius Shulman, Henry David Thoreau, Marc-Antoine Laugier, Jean-Luc Pilon, C.A. Weslager, Caroline M. Kirkland, Dawn E. Keetley, Alexis de Tocqueville, Mark Twain, Dianne Newell, Marie Bolton and Nancy C. Unger, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Edward Abbey, Helen A. Burns, Richard Johnson, Kathryn Schulz, Herbert Maier and A.H. Good, Michael Prokopow, Anyssa Neumann, Julius Schulman, David Hill, Chad Randl, Peter Rabbit, Simon Sadler, Scott Watson, Annie Dillard, Allen Ginsberg, Anne LaBastille, Diana Saverin, Mark Wigley, Matthew Grant, Finn Arne Jørgensen, Steven Seidman, Erin Cho, Zach Klein, Akiva Blander, Allison Geller and Monica Kim