Move over, Four Seasons! A new building concept takes its design cues from ad hoc

disaster shelters and can transform into just about anything including

yes, a swanky hotel! Like you’re slumming it, but with turndown

service!

The designers, WATG, call it pop-up hospitality. You

know, like pop-up shops,

pop-up cafes, and, of course, pop-up relief

shelters.

Modular units, which they say resemble prisms (and we say resemble

melting ice cubes), are pre-fabricated with plumbing, lighting fixtures,

and furnishings, so you can throw them up in a snap. Then, you can

configure them any which way: as spas, salons, guestrooms, mini-homes,

restaurants, bars, tented villas, you name it! If a rich person wants

it, they can do it!

WATG — the same firm that gave the

world the Venetian and

Dubai’s Atlantis at the Palm — says their new concept is especially

well-suited to “adventure travel and ‘voluntourism.'” We can picture

the trip brochure now: Ever wanted to visit a squalid orphanage in

Cambodia? Teach English to illiterate adults in Sierra Leone? Build straw

huts with your bare hands in Kenya? Now you can, in five-star comfort!

(WATG assures us that the units can be be redeployed as housing once the

tourists have cleared out. That’s assuming locals want to live in it.)