Tag Archives: Off-grid living

Architectural dwellings designed to conserve energy + support off-grid living

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In recent times, since a pandemic struck the world, the idea of an off-grid life has certainly become extremely appealing to a lot of people. Leading a natural life, breathing in fresh air, and maintaining a sustainable lifestyle are all highlights of going off-grid! You live on resources that can be harvested from the land and environment around you – this usually includes water and power. In other terms, you lead a self-sufficient life, completely free of the systems of society. Since going off-grid has gained such popularity, architects have been designing homes that can truly support an off-grid lifestyle! From a farmhouse-style tiny home outfitted with solar panels and rainwater collection to a prefab home with an upside-down layout – these intriguing architectural structures are designed to help you master off-grid living in the smoothest way possible!

1. Adraga

Called Adraga, the tiny home features an array of sustainability elements including solar panels, rainwater collection, and composting garden beds. As part of a larger series of tiny home one wheels, Adraga is home to a retired couple who just want to disconnect from the busyness of the world. Defined by a rectangular, flat-roofed silhouette, the team at Madeiguincho found movement through windows and doors. On one end of the tiny home, a single, farmhouse-style door welcomes residents into the home’s subdued bathroom. There, against the soothing backdrop of walnut wood panels, residents can enjoy a semi-outdoor shower atop wooden floor slats.

2. The Mansfield Container House

Named Mansfield Container House after the town where it resides, Walker’s tiny home is comprised of two 20-foot shipping containers that amount to 30-square-feet in total. Stocked with all of the necessities for off-grid living, the Mansfield Container House has the means for solar power as well as water treatment systems. Solar panels were placed on the roof to generate and store solar power, while water bladders were built into the roof to preserve 1,000 liters of rainwater. Then, an integrated steel screen produces some shade for the sunny days the tiny home’s residents want to lounge out on the deck. Since the cabin is off-grid, it does come with its own catalog of operational duties, as Walker explains, “It’s similar to the way a sailor must operate a yacht—you need to open a window to catch a breeze, and close down at the right time to avoid the bugs. But that’s part of the fun. It brings you closer to the elements and nature in this beautiful part of the world.”

3. Bruny Island Cabin

Designed by architecture studio Maguire + Devin, Bruny Island Cabin is a minimal off-grid holiday home in Tasmania. The cabin is lined with wood, and includes built-in furniture! “Born in Taiwan, she [the client] spent her childhood in traditional Japanese houses. Out of this grew a love for highly crafted minimalist design. Our brief was to capture that and design a building as a piece of furniture with everything she needs built-in.”, said the studio. Underground tanks collect rainwater which serves as the cabin’s water supply, whereas solar panels provide the home with electricity. A wood-fire burner can be used to warm up the living space.

4. Permanent Camping II

Designed and developed by Casey Brown Architecture, Permanent Camping II is a tiny house stripped-back to become a “retreat with ‘everything you need and nothing you don’t need’ with the demands of living distilled to the bare essentials.” Measuring a cozy 3×3 meters, the countryside haven leaves just enough room to accommodate two people comfortably. Since the architects behind Permanent Camping II hoped to find comfort while maintaining a small floor plan, the two towers were “designed to provide the essential requirements for a shelter, bed, porch or deck, fireplace, and bathroom.” Self-contained and sustainable, Permanent Camping II hosts a solar panel roof, water and sewage systems, and natural ventilation methods.

5. Playa Viva

Playa Viva is an ecoresort in Juluchuca, Mexico made up of off-grid treehouse-style villas with roofs shaped like the wings of Mobula Rays. As part of Playa Viva’s eco-resort appeal and mission, each villa is entirely self-sustained, garnering energy from the sun to power each facility and amenity. In close collaboration with the local community, Playa Viva supports health and education services for locals and works on a year-round basis to restore the surrounding land. Offering access to the rugged, unspoiled beauty of Mexico’s land, Playa Viva also works hard to protect it through the La Tortuga Viva Turtle Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization rooted in sea turtle conservation.

6. Boar Shoat

Imbue Design built this off-grid residence in Idaho to help a family “distance themselves from social stresses”. Called Boar Shoat, the low-lying home is located in a 197 square meter compound, which also includes a garage and a guest house. “He [the client] wanted a retreat – a place where he and his family could distance themselves from social stresses, withdraw digital connection, and commune with nature and each other,” said the studio. The house features photovoltaic paneling on the roof and insulation and sealing techniques. The roof also consists of a series of solar panels which power the home, while a cistern container in the garage supplies water to the home.

7. Edifice

Designed by Marc Thorpe, Edifice is a simple black off-grid cabin in Upstate New York. It’s been neatly tucked into the Catskill Mountains, situated in the little village of Fremont. The cabin features a single bedroom and occupies a total of 500 square meters. It’s nestled amongst trees, creating a quaint and quiet spot, that functions as a wonderful retreat in the midst of nature. The cabin was built as an example of “introverted architecture”, and is a self-sustaining structure that was an “exercise in reduction”. The little box is clad in stained cedar and features a simple rectangular form. The walls on the southern and western sides have thin windows, providing views of the surrounding greenery.

8. Hurley House

Moliving, a nomadic hospitality solution, has developed a line of Scandinavian-inspired, prefabricated tiny homes called Hurley House, which can be placed anywhere as tiny private retreats for guests to find relaxation. With hopes of providing city dwellers with a private, countryside oasis, Hurley House is set to replace Hudson Valley’s now-inoperative Twin Lakes Resort. Each prefabricated tiny home comprises 400-square-meters and packs a lot into such a tiny space. Whether the tiny home brings guests to a lake’s shoreline or a wintry wonderland, each model features identical layouts that work to embrace the outdoors of any setting. The units are also designed for on- or off-grid living, depending on each guest’s preference.

9. The Falcon House

The Falcon House is a modular, prefabricated home with an upside-down layout and off-grid capabilities designed by sustainable architecture studio Koto. In building the Falcon House, Koto utilized a “plug-and-play” construction system, where all of the home’s modules are constructed and prefabricated offsite before coming together on site. The Falcon House’s dark, cross-laminated timber exterior is contrasted with the interior’s whitewashed, wood-paneled walls. Evocative of Yakisugi, a Japanese wood charring process that weatherproofs timber building material, the Falcon House’s black exterior becomes a cloak in the dark of the night.

10. The Nomad house-on-wheels

Being the only Minimaliste camper capable of off-grid operation, the Nomad camper includes a composting toilet, two 36-gallon tanks for black and gray water, as well as a 54-gallon freshwater tank allowing two people to enjoy a short vacation without having to empty or fill the tanks. Additionally, Minimaliste equipped the roof with a grid of solar panels that take lithium batteries, outfitting each Nomad camper with a minimum of 5.12 kWh solar power, or an advanced package stocked with 10.24 kWh.

The post Architectural dwellings designed to conserve energy + support off-grid living first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny home features an open-plan layout and solar system for off-grid living!

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Kingfisher is a tiny home from the New Zealand-based tiny home company, Build Tiny, that doesn’t feel so tiny on the inside, featuring room for a full kitchen, shower and bath, dining area, living room, and two-bedroom loft.

Few topics are hotter right now than off-grid, tiny living. After spending so much time in our own homes in recent years, we’re slowly waking up to the concept of downsizing. We don’t need such large-scale living spaces when we can pack all we have into 400-square-meters or less.

Offering clients the opportunity to design their own fully functional and personalized tiny homes, Build Tiny is a New Zealand-based tiny home company devoted to small-scale living. Kingfisher, one of Build Tiny’s more popular tiny home models, is a flexible and open-plan mobile tiny home that has enough space for everything from a full kitchen to a two-bedroom loft.

Measuring 8m long x 2.4w x 4.2h, Kingfisher keeps an average, approachable size. From the outside, Kingfisher sports a steel frame clad in vinyl with a cedar feature wall to the side that’s lined with vertical timber panels. The aluminum windows are double glazed to provide ultimate thermal insulation during the colder months.

The roof is only slightly pitched to provide some headspace inside for the two loft sleeping spaces, giving the tiny home a more dynamic quadrilateral shape. Placed on top of the pitched roof, Build Tiny provided Kingfisher with a solar system for off-grid power, consisting of ​​6 x Trina 270w Honey Poly Module panels.

Inside, residents can enjoy all the typical household amenities like a shower and bath, full kitchen, living space, dining area, and sleeping lofts. Walking from the stark black steel exterior into poplar core plywood-lined interior, residents are welcomed by a spacious entryway with the living room on the right and kitchen to the left.

Each room features plenty of hidden storage compartments, like bookshelves and lift-up cubbies, to optimize the tiny living space inside Kingfisher. In the bathroom, a folding shelf allows space for clothes and towels while residents use the shower. Then, under the staircase, Build Tiny incorporated concealed, slide-out cabinets that could work as kitchen pantries or additional wardrobes.

Just beyond the entryway, attached to the home’s main wall, a ladder brings residents to the tiny home’s two-bedroom loft, where one larger bed remains just a few feet away from two twin-sized beds. While the Kingfisher certainly fits the tiny home bill, with plenty of integrated storage space and a pitched roof, residents won’t feel the tininess on the inside.

Designer: Build Tiny

Throughout the home, added space-saving features take full advantage of the available living space.

An integrated ladder brings residents to the home’s two-bedroom loft.

The living space stands just to the right of the home’s spacious entryway.

Concealed, pull-out cabinets leave room for kitchen supplies and excess accessories. 

While the two bedrooms are only a few feet away from one another, they remain on opposite ends of the tiny home.

A folding cabinet provides storage space for clothes and towels while residents shower.

Solar systems and other power accessories provide the means for off-grid living.

The post This tiny home features an open-plan layout and solar system for off-grid living! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This original tiny home in the countryside is the ultimate freedom from city stress for this couple!

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‘Living Big in a Tiny House,’ met up with New Zealand couple Russel and Leah to tour their tiny home built to escape the high stress of the city for the high hills of the countryside.

Over the span of three years, our worlds have seemed to downsize. The pandemic transformed our lifestyles and prompted many of us to escape the rat races of city living and find respite in nature. Garnering attention from city residents eager to get out, tiny homes have become our one-way tickets.

‘Living Big in a Tiny House,’ a YouTube channel that covers a variety of tiny homes, met up with Russel and Leah, a police detective and social worker, who swapped the stress of urban life for an original tiny home on their friend’s plot of farmland in New Zealand.

In New Zealand, the views are aplenty. No matter where your gaze goes, different views of sloping, grassy hillsides, golden hour sunsets, and towering trees seem to follow. For Russel and Leah, their tiny home was designed especially to bring the outdoors and all of its wonder inside. “Almost every wall,” Leah describes, “has got a window or a door and that, of course, makes the house feel bigger, bringing the outdoors in and keeping the house cool during the summer.”

While many tiny house builders coat their home’s interior walls in white paint to enlargen the living space, the windows that punctuate almost every wall in Russel and Leah’s house provide an open-air feel and allow room for moodier interior design elements.

Walking through the tiny home’s spacious french doors, the lounge area welcomes guests with a black and white cowhide rug to hearken the wildlife right outside and set the tone for the rest of the home. Just behind the rug, a plush, emerald corner sofa provides plenty of resting space and storage beneath its cushions.

From the living room, the dining area and kitchen are well within sight. A breakfast counter merges the two rooms together and doubles as a workspace. In stark contrast to the living room’s optic white walls, the kitchen features matte black walls and robust wooden accents that might come from cedar or cherry timber.

Beneath the all-black storage units, emerald tilework is illuminated with soft, warm under-cabinet lighting. Just next door to the living room is the couple’s bedroom and bathroom, where an incinerator toilet, laundry machines, and a foldout ironing board can be found.

When designing their tiny home, which measures out to 34x10ft, Russel and Leah were focused on council consent. While the home is prepared for off-grid living, with solar panels and water treatment plumbing intact and ready for use, Russel and Leah do not regularly live off-grid, opting instead for conventional electricity and plumbing.

Designers: Russel and Leah x Living Big in a Tiny House

Semi-trailers transform into luxury caravans in Poland’s first mobile hotel chain concept!

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Good Spot is Poland’s first mobile hotel chain built from renovated isothermal refrigerated semi-trailers found abandoned throughout Poland.

While some of us are ready to commit to the mobile lifestyle, the rest of us want a trial period. Mobile hotels are cropping up in response. Ranging from floating hotels to camp trailers, mobile hotels are even inspiring many to continue with their own mobile lifestyle following checkout.

Inspired by the mobile lifestyle and the movement of wind, Wrocław-based architecture and interior design firm Znamy sie constructed Good Spot, Poland’s first mobile hotel chain concept that transforms disused isothermal refrigerated semi-trailers into two-bedroom mobile campers.

Following a kitesurfing trip in Poland’s coastal town of Hel, the designers at Znamy sie set out to conceptualize a mobile hotel chain designed for guests to travel wherever the wind brings them. Honing in on the hotel’s mobility concept, Znamy sie first coated each dilapidated isothermal refrigerated semi-trailer with a stainless steel exterior similar to the Airstream caravan. Inside each trailer, the designers outfitted the perimeter with all of the amenities and functional elements found in hotels.

Reserving the perimeter of each trailer for the amenities provided more interior walking room, carving out a spacious walking path from one end of the trailer to the other. Custom-built wooden furnishings wrap around the perimeter of Good Spot trailers that include plenty of storage space and seating. Accommodating up to four adults, both ends of Good Spot trailers host two separate sleeping areas where large windows help draw in natural light, brightening the interior’s crisp, white walls even further.

Through Good Spot, Znamy sie remains committed to ecological tourism by bringing new purpose to discarded semi-trailers and providing the off-grid means to explore all of Poland’s natural beauty. Speaking to this, Znamy sie says, “Our project, prepared in cooperation with Good spot, involves upcycling, i.e. increasing the value of the material and changing the purpose of cold storage to hotel rooms. By renovating the trailer, we give it a second life!”

Designer: Znamy sie

 

Two DIYers built this off-grid micro-cabin from repurposed steel and recycled building material for almost no cost!

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Nathalie and Greg Kupfer’s micro-cabin is built from repurposed waste findings and secondhand furnishings, outfitted with rainwater collection sites and solar systems for off-grid living.

We each have our own budget shopping tricks. Some of us hit up department store sale racks, some hoard coupons and bring them out just in time for the holidays, and then a rare few know just the right dumpster where they’ll find the perfect lamp or photo frame to clean up and decorate the living room for free. Two select DIYers of that rare few found most of the structural and interior design elements for their new off-grid, micro-home in sidewalk waste piles and handoffs from friendly neighbors.

Retired industrial designer and former paramedic, Nathalie and Greg Kupfer began work on their off-grid micro-cabin in Canmore, Alberta after receiving a plot of ranch land and a decrepit shed from two neighbors. Following the cabin’s fortuitous beginnings, the Kupfer’s conceived a layout for their snug, solar-powered, 97-square-foot micro cabin built from recycled and repurposed outfittings, amounting to a total net cost of only $50.

During a summer spent collecting building material and constructing their new micro-home, the Kupfer’s found all they needed from neighborly help. Finding new purpose in discarded steel, the Kupfer’s cast the micro cabins siding in steel for an all-season, durable finish. Receiving a seemingly down-and-out garden shed from a neighbor, Nathalie and Greg scored insulation material and glazed windows to keep the home warm during colder months and to bring sweeping views inside the cabin’s domed 14-foot ceiling. Finally, by relocating gravel from the cabin’s driveway to the kitchen, the Kupfer’s designed and built a gabion wall behind the kitchen’s wood stove.

Before selling the materials that weren’t used for the cabin’s construction, the forested retreat cost the couple $2,109. Included in the project’s net cost, Nathalie and Greg put out an additional $20 to build and furnish an outhouse on the property. Once the cabin’s build reached completion, the DIYers got back almost all of the $2,109 they spent on construction by selling unneeded building material they bought through bartering.

Designers: Nathalie and Greg Kupfer

With eco-insulation and solar power, this tiny home built from five shipping containers was designed for off-grid living!

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Ahurewa is a 60m2 off-grid tiny home constructed from five shipping containers to provide natural eco-insulation and the potential for modular expansion. Situated in the mountains of New Zealand’s Mahakirau Forest Estate, Ahurewa is a sustainable tiny home equipped with twelve solar panels, a 4kw system inverter, two 25,000 liter water tanks, and a worm-composting septic system.

Shipping containers are steadily proving to be much more multifunctional than we’re used to giving them credit. Initially passed off as just a means for delivery, we’ve seen the shipping container become a backyard swimming pool and now, the YouTube series ‘Living Big in a Tiny House,’ documents an off-grid home in the Mahakirau Forest Estate built from five 20-foot shipping containers.

After moving in with her husband, Rosie sold her home in Auckland to buy some land in the mountains where she could begin construction on her off-grid tiny home. Of the 600 hectares that make up the Mahakirau Forest Estate, Rosie’s tiny home, dubbed Ahurewa to honor the surrounding woodlands, takes up only nine of them. Each home site is covenanted with the QEII National Trust, trusting landowners to be guardians of the surrounding environment and protect it.

Composed of five shipping containers, Rosie’s tiny home benefits from natural eco-insulation and an industrial build that’s long-lasting and durable. Four of the five shipping containers are dedicated to actual living space, while the fifth shipping container only keeps the home’s mudroom. The mudroom primarily functions as a transitional space between the outdoors and indoors. Inside, Rosie houses the batteries, inverter, and power board for the solar panels that line the roof, keeping the hum of the inverter an appropriate distance away from the bedroom.

Since Rosie’s tiny home is entirely off-grid, sustainable utilities and add-ons fill the exterior and interior of each shipping container. Twelve solar panels line one shipping container’s roof, which is powered by a 4-kilowatt system inverter. Outside, two 25,000 liter water tanks and a worm-composting septic system provide water and an accompanying purification system for continued use and safe drinking.

Designer: Rosie x Living Big in a Tiny House

Unfinished plywood panels line the one bedroom of the house, highlighting the panoramic view of the surrounding environment, as seen through the double-glazed, floor-to-ceiling windows. 

Ahurewa’s bathroom features concrete panels and stained wood accents to complement the home’s industrial look.

The tiny home wraps around an exterior deck to provide 360° views of the mountains and forests that surround it.

One side of the house receives sunlight during the afternoon and evenings, while the other receives morning sunlight, so both sun and shade are within walking distance.