Cabin Fever is an international summer school and festival launched by the Hungarian architecture studio Hello Wood, known for its design-build approach and community-focused, sustainable projects. Since its founding in 2010, Hello Wood has become a global platform merging hands-on education with socially engaged architecture.

The 2026 edition, powered by VELUX, will once again explore how light and space shape human experience — placing presence, intimacy, and connection at the centre of architecture. This dialogue with VELUX reflects a shared conviction: that the future of building lies in responsibility — in creating spaces with care, with awareness, and with light — offering meaningful alternatives in an overstimulated world.

2026 Concept, Location, Participants

In 2026, Cabin Fever will take place from 20–28 July in Česká Kamenice, Czech Republic, on the grounds of a former textile factory. The site’s historical layers provide a setting where architecture, learning, and social engagement can intersect.

The theme developed together with VELUX focuses on the role of light and space in shaping everyday experience. Participants will explore how architecture can create environments that support presence, intimacy, and connection through material, structure, and atmosphere.

How Hello Wood Arrived in Česká Kamenice

Hello Wood’s journey to Česká Kamenice began in Csóromfölde, a nearly abandoned rural site in Hungary. Once the grounds of a noble estate, the village was emptied during World War II and left to decay. Through their three-year-long Project Village programme, Hello Wood brought together students, professors, and architectural studios from around the world to explore how design and building could breathe new life into depopulated rural areas.

After similar international programmes in Argentina and San Francisco, the studio sought a new European location where their model could continue to evolve a place that could host not only physical structures, but also conversations about the deeper role of architecture in society. This vision found a natural ally in VELUX, whose architectural philosophy, centred on the interplay of space, light, and lived experience, and on architecture as a socially engaged practice.

Through a network of Czech architects previously involved in Project Village, particularly Mjölk architekti, who played a key role in building local connections, Hello Wood was introduced to Česká Kamenice. The town’s layered history, natural beauty, and local ambition for revitalisation made it the ideal setting for this shared mission.

An open call for architects brought in new collaborators, united under a shared vision: a three-year programme in which Hello Wood returns each summer with an international team of students and professionals to co-create not just buildings, but lasting relationships between architecture, people, and the environment.

This is not just a festival or a workshop — it is a growing ecosystem, rooted in cooperation, learning, and the belief that architecture can be a powerful social act.

CABINS to Build

Three Rooms
Three Rooms approaches the cabin as a flexible system rather than a fixed object. Instead of defining a single way of living, it establishes a spatial framework that can adapt to different climates, numbers of users, and changing needs. The project consists of three prefabricated rooms with different levels of technical definition. A compact core concentrates sleeping areas and services, while a more open room allows multiple everyday uses. A third room functions as a climatic buffer between inside and outside, working as a transitional or seasonal space. Produced off-site and assembled with minimal impact, the system allows multiple configurations and relationships with the surrounding landscape.