Mud, music and my.Hab or yours?

Gone are the days when worse-for-wear Glastonbury festival-goers searched in vain for their tent among thousands of others.

James Dunlop, a student at the University of the West of England, has designed a temporary cardboard shelter to sleep in at music festivals.

Campers can order and customise their own my.Hab online, decorating the air-raid shelter-style hut with colours, patterns or even their own pictures.

The shelter will be erected before they arrive and dismantled when they leave, so camping virgins need not touch a tent peg.

My.Hab is constructed of two recycled plastic components that hold in place a cardboard skin. The skin is treated so that it will not collapse under Glastonbury's customary torrential rain or go up in flames at the first spark of a cigarette lighter.

Mr Dunlop, who has just graduated with a first-class degree in creative product design, said: "The organisers of Glastonbury said that their major concern was the number of tents left behind. The site is a working farm and after the festival the cows need to go back in the field. But my.Hab will be taken away afterwards."

He added: "All the hundreds of thousands of people who go to festivals such as Glastonbury have a major impact on the environment."

Mr Dunlop's design, which aims to attract a new type of festival-goer as well as making life easier for regular campers, last week won an award sponsored by Corus at the New Designers 2006 exhibition.

As a result of taking part in the exhibition, Mr Dunlop is in discussions with a potential investor.

Tod Burton, the programme leader of the creative product design course at UWE, said: "This course is relatively new, so it is gratifying to gain the reflected recognition that comes from producing award-winning students such as James."