One in five companies is of the opinion that the economic crisis also has its positive sides. Although the economic weather remains dark and cloudy, many design companies and product developers are over-booked or on the lookout for promising collaborators. The international design practice Enthoven Associates from Antwerp, Belgium, is fully occupied with real, innovative projects. The young team remains busily engaged in an original approach to further developing the core business of the agency: mobility. For a consortium of investors, they designed a new mobile holiday home: “Opera”.

It is not a tent, not a caravan and not a motor home.

The Opera allows you to stay in the most beautiful places, but with the luxury of a wine cabinet, warm-air heating, espresso bar and an enclosed teak veranda. This nomadic, contemporary living tent offers the quality of a luxury yacht combined with the outdoor feeling of camping under canvas.

The finishing touches are currently being put to the first Operas, which are being made completely by hand in Geldrop in the Netherlands. Only first class materials like hardwood, stainless steel and leather are used in production. The dimensions of the Opera are magical. When it has opened and levelled itself by electric power – inside 5 minutes and without tent pegs, stabilizer jacks and loose tent poles – what you see is a residence measuring 7 metres long, more than 3 metres wide and 3.5 metres high with every conceivable luxury: two first class and electrically adjustable beds that become one with a single simple movement, hot and cold water, ceramic toilet, LED lighting and a mobile hob and barbecue, for example, for cooking outside. An exclusive, small number of Operas will go into production in 2010.

The mobile holiday home will be supplied with what is known as the Opera Guide, which presents a selection of exclusive sites with information about good restaurants and picturesque destinations in the surrounding area.

“Opera” is on show during the Design at Work productshow “Things to come” – www.yoursuiteinnature.com