Jan Nagel: The Cork creator who started vanlife before the craze

Home Editor Eve Kelliher talks to Cork-based Jan-Peter Nagle who creates bespoke campervan living spaces

Jan-Peter Nagel. Pictures: Unfollow Camper Vans

Long before digital nomads roamed the lands and our algorithms, Jan-Peter (Jan) Nagel packed up his VW camper and steered it towards his dreams.

This was 1999 — well ahead of the ignition that sparked vanlife into existence. “It’s kind of funny because it has since become mainstream, but when I started travelling around and living in my van nobody was doing it,” says Jan.

The road that conveyed him from his native Berlin ultimately led to Cork — via the Canary Islands. “Often I’d find myself in a situation where I had to explain myself — nobody really understood it [vanlife] back then,” says Jan. “And then the whole social media phenomenon of vanlife came up, and it exploded in popularity. But when I started out, it was a very unusual life — it probably still is for most people.”

Jan knew from his childhood that he wanted to spend his days chasing the horizon. “When I was five or six, my parents came home with an old Volkswagen camper, and we’d always spend our holidays going to campsites. I was the one in our family who became hooked on it,” he says.

Now based in Passage West (“but realistically I spend much more time living in my van than in my house”), Jan works at the Marina Commercial Park in Cork. “That’s where the magic happens,” he says.

When he’s not on the move across Ireland, seeking out the best wild-camping stop-offs, Jan crafts bespoke campervan conversions, reimagining standard vans as portable living spaces featuring handcrafted natural timber interiors and custom design elements.

For the past two years, Jan has enjoyed bursts of off-grid living in an ex-DHL delivery vehicle that he had revamped “from scratch” to spec. “In its previous life, this Iveco Daily was a parcel delivery van in a small town in Germany,” says Jan.

He recently sold the bright yellow mobile micro-cabin and is now “tipping away” at its replacement, a VW Crafter, and begins a new commission in September, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 4x4. “I love starting with an empty sheet and coming up with a design concept,” he says.

Jan cannot put a number on how many vehicles he has converted over almost three decades. But he has lived in transformed tiny homes on wheels across Europe. Open the door to any of them and what would we see? “The most cosy camper you can imagine,” says Jan.

And, like him, newly minted campervan dwellers will often discover they get a more restful night’s slumber in their mobile homes than in their houses. “So many people I make campervans for tell me they sleep better in the campervan than in their home. They’ll often come home from a trip and decide to sleep in the campervan in their driveway!”

Does Jan ever do likewise when he parks outside his residence in Passage West? “Sometimes — but I prefer being out in the woods or the beach,” he says. “I love going off, often even without a fixed destination. I just go. A few weeks ago I was roaming around in Mayo and discovered a few new spots there.”

His flair for motorhome makeovers manifested itself 27 years ago when Jan was still living in Berlin. “My father is an engineer, and my mother is an artist, and I kind of turned out to be a combination of the two of them,” he tells Home. “In 1999, I spotted the most beautiful old rusty Volkswagen van I’d ever seen. I was obsessed. I wanted that van so much. I eventually managed to buy it and converted it to suit my needs as a camper.”

Jan-Peter Nagel. Pictures: Unfollow Camper Vans

Job done, the Canary Islands beckoned, where Jan stayed for seven years, during which he worked at “everything that came my way”. Then it was time to hit the highways and byways again for more exploration as he plotted his next move. Because of his passion for wind-surfing and kite-surfing, Jan was keen to stay on the Atlantic Coast. “I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t been, so I got out my old map and saw Ireland. And 16 years after arriving, I’m still here,” he says. “I didn’t know anything about Ireland. I moved to outside Castlegregory as that was the only place I had heard of that was really cool for doing water sports.”

A relocation to Cork followed a year later when Jan took up a corporate IT role, and in 2015 he returned to creative and craft work, as a carpenter, furniture maker and wood-turner as well as an in-demand designer and builder of bespoke campervans. “I am so blessed; I have my own little company Unfollow Camper Vans, creating campervans; it’s incredible,” he says.

While unearthing locations to love is easy, finding time to take off on tour can be tricky. As well as participating in Cork Craft Month, which continues until the end of August, Jan’s schedule is full-on as he completes van projects. The process usually starts when people arrive with an empty van, he says: “I then start designing. I use pen and paper to create drawings for the interior concept.” All safety-regulated elements are completed to certified standards.

His background in tiny-home living and design makes Jan a go-to for developing small-space solutions. “It’s quite the challenge — putting a full house on a few square metres is not easy,” he says. “I worked on cabins too in the past — but now it’s only campervans, and many of them actually become homes-on-wheels for their owners,” he says.

His key advice? “When you don’t have much room, function defines a lot,” he says. “Make sure a drawer is positioned somewhere it doesn’t collide with anything else, for instance.”

Curved furniture, including egg-shaped tables, is another must for a bijou abode, says Jan: “I am playing with round shapes more and more — I do a lot of curved furniture. It’s so sad; we all basically spend our lives in boxes. Our rooms are boxes, we go to work in a box, we drive around in a box, so I try to break the boxes up a little bit.”

Everyone deserves to turn their road trip into “a story, an extraordinary adventure”, he believes. “People come to me with a vision of what they want, and after a few chats they may find out that that vision is not what they need,” says Jan. And while social media scrolls prompt some mood boards, experiences are what matter, he says: “It’s more important to actually travel and go on adventures than to have a YouTube van.

“Of course, I am delighted to design it if the customer wants it, but it’s much more important that people have a really nice time travelling in a campervan. It’s bespoke work. I try to find the right solution for each individual.”

Jan will then create an interior “that feels like home”, he adds. The vans are also off-grid-ready, with solar panels, lithium batteries, diesel heaters, water tanks, and inverters. “I think it is so important to do something we love with the precious time we have in life,” he says.

Jan-Peter Nagel is participating in Cork Craft Month; see

Corkcraftanddesign.ie

. His website is

Unfollow.ie