Shelter (1973) is a sprawling photo-book compiled by Lloyd Kahn that documents vernacular building traditions and experimental dwellings across the world.
Kahn had been the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, and in Shelter he carried forward that ethos. Its pages move from Mongolian yurts to Californian communes, from desert cob to alpine timbering. The result is a counter-archive that values ingenuity, resourcefulness, and place-based craft.
Shelter frames dwelling as an act of care and imagination, an extension of landscape rather than its erasure. Half manifesto, half scrapbook, the book remains a touchstone for those who dream of living otherwise: homes as experiments, as improvisations, and as continuations of the earth itself.
See also: Domebook One
Images from Door of Perception.
