This exhibition, which formed part of Cube's inaugural programme, explains that portable architecture is now more relevant than ever. It is dynamic, responsive and adaptable. It can mean an economic usage of materials and a low environmental impact. It also encourages innovation. In short portable architecture offers effective solutions to the problems of today.

"We no longer believe in the monumental, the heavy and the static, and have enriched our sensibilities with a taste for lightness, transcience and practicality...we must invent and rebuild ex novo our modern city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, active, mobile, and everywhere dynamic, and the modern building like a giant machine. Sant Elia, Citta Nuova, 1913, Quoted in B.Appleyard, Richard Rodgers, London, 1986.

Of all the objects created by society, buildings are amongst the heaviest and most enduring. They shape and inform not only our urban and rural landscape, but also our history and our sense of ourselves. However, the problems inherent in a static and inflexible approach to making buildings are becoming increasingly apparent. In a society that makes ever-increasing demands on the physical environment and where our surroundings are in a state of constant and dramatic flux, a form of architecture that can respond to change and that is sensitive to widely differing social and cultural needs is required. We must demand more viable alternatives to meet our basic need for shelter and comfort, and a more appropriate method of defining ourselves and the space in which we live.

Portable buildings are commonly perceived as being on the margins of mainstream architecture. However, moveable buildings were amongst the earliest structures made by human society, and the technology utilised in some traditional transitory buildings, such as tents, tipis and yurts, have not only existed more or less unchanged for hundreds of years but are the basis and inspiration for the permanent architecture of today.