Skip to main content

Meet Escape Pod, the Perfectly Minimalist (and British) Backyard Getaway

escape pod
Today’s social media landscape is flush with alternative living options. Faced with the surfeit of cabins, tiny houses, pimped-out vans and school buses, and modular kits in every conceivable shape, what is the aspiring minimalist to do?

Dominic Ash and Jeremy Fitter, a pair of too-appropriately-named-to-exist builders in Gloucestershire, England, have your solution. Behold the escape pod™.

Related Videos

The escape pod is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from a design team whose previous credits include boat restoration, apprenticeship under Quaker furniture makers, and a master’s degree in treehouse engineering. (What are the rest of us even doing with our lives?) The name of their concept is a play on the design’s sci-fi forebears. However, this escape pod isn’t meant to help rebel heroes evacuate unobtrusively from the lair of an intergalactic warlord. Instead, this pod is the escape, thoughtfully designed to foster terrestrial serenity.

With its ellipsoid shape and nubby exterior, the escape pod could be mistaken at a distance for a very large toadstool or root ball growing in your back forty. Reminiscent of an egg in one of those little egg cups found in Cotswold cottages, the 10-foot-high pod perches on a foundation 1.5 feet off the ground. The frame is made of hand-milled birch, while the exterior is covered in cedar shingles, left untreated so that their warm honey hues weather over time to a silvery finish.

Entered via an “aircraft-style plug door,” the 75-square-foot spherical interior feels somewhere between a womb and a warm hug. A dome skylight in the top of the egg showers the room in natural light. Sliver windows, cut parallel or perpendicular to the ground, further open up the space and prevent it from feeling too confining.

The Podmakers website proposes four different models for the escape pod’s interior — office, entertaining space, studio, or “snug” (the delightful British term for a small, comfortable room — see “pod”). Each of these models may be further customized with built-in storage, power sockets or extra windows. The pod is insulated and may be outfitted with electric floor heating, or with a chimney and wood stove.

The escape pod combines the best features of just about every minimal living space your Instagram feed can throw at you. It has the organic shape and texture of a woodland cabin. It has the all-in-one convenience of a tiny house. It has the compact flexibility of any yurt, dome, or geodesic whatnot under the sun. And, while it can’t take you on a road trip from Big Sur to the Berkshires, may we point out that this thing rotates? Simply lift and remove the little stepladder underneath the door, seize the little handle sprouting from the pod’s outer wall, and push. Voilà! Natural lighting all day long. Let’s see your shipping container house do that.

The escape pod from Podmakers comes at a price tag of £19, 800 — that’s $26,000. We’re guessing that does not include shipping, installation, or assembly. In other words, it’s in the upper price tier for minimalist modular spaces. But let’s be honest — in today’s world, can you put a price on escape? Judging by the pod inspo on Podmakers’ Instagram, the answer is no, you cannot.

Editors' Recommendations

Smartdomes: The House of the Future for a Generation on the Move
Smart Domes

Camper vans, tiny homes, and now Smartdomes -- all are different solutions for a generation that is looking to redefine what the last century referred to as a home. Whether it's a question about affordability, access to urban and/or natural areas, or the freedom to roam -- the 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a nice piece of lawn is being challenged as the standard 'home sweet home.' Unlike camper vans and tiny homes, though, Smartdomes aren't looking to the past for inspiration, but to the future.

Smartdome is a Slovenian company that designs compact, DIY-build domiciles that can be installed in any environment. Their concept is comprised of three main ideas -- multi-functionality, mobility, and modulation. The goal behind the design is to offer a do-it-yourself living space that can adapt to its environment, be built smaller or larger with modular components, and can be assembled and disassembled with ease for mobility.

Read more
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ trailer: There’s plenty for adult fans to love
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back on the big screen
seth rogens teenage mutant ninja turtles trailer tmnt

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the most enduring entertainment franchises of all time. Between comic books, video games, action figures, and movies, the sarcastic, funny, and kickass adolescent reptiles have been relevant in a variety of mediums since the 1980s. What was once a signature franchise for Generation X and Millennials has now been passed down to new generations of fans.

Still, the heartbeat of the fandom comes from these older generations. TMNT lost its way a little bit in recent years, but original fans have now attempted to bring back what made the stories and characters so unique. It started with the video game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, which came out in the summer of 2022, and now it extends to the Seth Rogen-produced film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

Read more
F1 Saudi Arabian GP live stream: Watch Formula 1 for free
Formula 1 driver exiting turn.

The F1 Championship continues with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix commencing soon. It's going to be an exciting race with Max Verstappen sure to want to build on his victory in Bahrain earlier this month. If you're keen to see the latest F1 Saudi Arabian live stream, there's a particularly great way to do so and even better -- it won't cost you a cent. Intrigued to know more? Here's all you need to know about how to watch the thrilling race.
Watch the free Saudi Arabian GP live stream
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is being aired for free in Austria and Luxembourg. This is great news for those in the countries, but devastating for residents traveling abroad who want to watch the action unfold live in their local language -- especially when it's free-to-watch at home. It's only fitting that an Austrian currently in the United States would want to watch the race in Austrian and not English, right? This is completely safe and legal to do with a VPN like NordVPN. Just install it, choose to the location you wish to connect to, then fire up broadcast. The free streams are ORF in Austria or RTL Zwee in Luxembourg.

Unfortunately, there isn't a free Saudi Arabian GP live stream for residents of other countries. Elsewhere, folks will need to tune in through a local broadcast partner. The race is available on ESPN in the United States, and the best way to tune in is through fuboTV, which offers a one-week free trial to new customers In the United Kingdom, it's available on Sky Sports F1, and over in Canada it's being broadcast in English through TNS and in French through RDS. There are some other options available as well -- below we'll talk you through the different ways you can tune in locally in the United States in more detail.

Read more