Mobile Bread-House is a collaborative project funded by Princeton’s David Gardner Magic Grant.  The Mobile Bread-House Project is part of a series of bread related interventions inspired by Dr. Nadezdha Savova and The Bread Houses Network. The Project is being Designed and Executed by Raymond Olive, MS and Pete Abrams.

People from all walks of life are welcome at the Mobile Bread-House to experience the joys of collaborative making in this unique one of a kind space.  The Mobile Bread-House is a Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Art Installation.  The space performs as a Social Incubator that uses the act of bread-making as an artistic and social medium.  Bread is a cultural fiber woven within our societal fabric, composed of three basic ingredients: flour, salt, and water.  Throughout time they have been interpreted in many formats in pursuit of creating both a domestic and ceremonial product that is the perfect balance of form, function, and representation.  Bread-Making is an artistic expression that requires no formal skill, it is democratic, therefore it transcends race, creed, and socio-economics, most importantly it is delicious.

The exterior of the Mobile Bread-House borrows from the design vernacular of the B-Home.  This MBH is composed of a hexagonal structure made of pallets sitting atop a retrofitted boat trailer.  The hexagonal structure defines the interior space, which is custom outfitted with a sink, table, seating, storage, and oven to support the Bread-House Methodology for Community Building.

Completed in May 2013, the first Mobile Bread House (a house with an oven on wheels) in the US travels across neighborhoods in the New York – New Jersey area to bring people together to make bread. While one of our visions is to have in the future a retrofitted school bus with an oven and collective bread-making table inside (see the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDiEp1glldU), we were awarded the Annual Princeton Gardner MAGIC Grant for Innovative Inter-disciplinary Project to build a Mobile Bread House (MBH) on a trailer as a mobile structure.MBH is being designed and built by students from across universities – Princeton, Parsons, Pratt, and Harvard – in a wide, inter-disciplinary and inter-university collaborative project on interventional design. The project was coordinated by Dr. Nadezhda Savova and the main executing coordinator was Pete Abrams, whose work inspired the Mobile Bread House. Pete has been developing the BHome (thebhome.wikispaces.com/) model of affordable housing units in the shape of bee hive cells has the potential to revolutionize our practices of building and living.

The mobile Mobile Bread House is one of the bee hive cells built on top of a trailer, a community space on wheels equipped with a wood-fired oven, a big round table, where people of all ages and cultures gather to make bread together and build unique social connections; shelves full of herbs and teas from various countries (mobile tea room) and with world coffees (mobile coffee house); and a hydroponic green roof, growing wheat grass from different countries as well as fresh herbs and other plants. MBH goes to various neighborhoods to house these communal bread-making events/mini festivals, called “BREAD AND CIRCUSES”, as a new twist on the classic expression, and inspire people to eat local and healthy and to build around food a sense of community and cooperation. 

For a description of this innovative architectural achievement, designed by Raymond Olive, please visit his website here and learn about how the bread house functions as a mobile community cultural center here.

Thus, in brief, the Mobile Bread House is the focal point of collective events, which combine food with arts, education, and forum for discussions and civic initiatives open to the public in various communities to bridge neighborhood thresholds. Our bread-making events have cultural, nutritional, and environmental education components, while the goal is to connect people from diverse backgrounds. The Mobile Bread House provides an exciting and stimulating experience, which uncovers each person’s creativity, inspired to develop in the unique ambiance of the warmth of a traditional wood-fired oven, the silky feel of flour, the rhythm of kneading dough, and the aroma of baking bread.

One of the main missions and programs of the Mobile Bread House is the OVENS FOR PEACE Program, defined in our Programs section. The MBH will be fully equipped with a rammed earth brick-press and shovels to be able to engage a community and collectively with locals of all ages build a wood-fired oven over a weekend, where the oven would become the lasting communal focal point after the Mobile Bread House leaves the neighborhood to go to another one, to seed another oven. Our vision is to cooperate with organizations and initiatives like the East Africa Trust program building rammed earth/mud ovens for people in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and others as an alternative for almost no cost to the detrimental open-fire cooking that cause lung cancer among women in Africa (see more at http://rammedearth.blogspot.com/2010/03/rammed-earth-stoves-in-malawi.html).

Again, social transformation happens step by step, one loaf as well as one oven at a time.

Read this article about the MBH
http://www.treehugger.com/modular-design/mobile-bread-house-rolling-bakery-made-pallets.html