This tiny house has been designed for sustainable, energy-efficient, off-the-grid living!

Posted on 04/10/2021 by Chi Thukral

I love tiny houses but even more if they are designed to be sustainable, energy-efficient, and on wheels – that is exactly what Project Ursa is! The mobile home is made for off-the-grid living featuring solar panels, water harvesting systems, and the coziest interiors that makes the “cabin in the woods” aesthetic into a lifestyle.

Tiny houses on wheels have to have a length of 4m, 5m, and respectively 7m, to be 2,5m wide and to have a maximum height of 4m. The Ursa tiny house is currently located in Cascais, Portugal, and can function completely off-grid.

To ensure that, the roof features a subtle 5% slope which allows rainwater to drain easily into a couple of water tanks with a total capacity of 650 liters. This water is then redirected to the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, and the shower where it’s filtered and reused. After that, the reused water goes into another tank and from there is used for watering plants.

On top of the roof, Ursa features solar panels which are facing South. Their inclination can be adjusted up to 30% in order to maximize the energy product all year round, making this a very efficient off-grid tiny house.

The energy produced by these solar panels is being converted and stored for later uses so the inhabitants can always have energy on demand when needed. Check out our informational article covering solar panel companies if you’re interesting in this subject.

This tiny house offers 17 square meters of living space in total which is organized into a kitchen, a full bathroom with a dry toilet that produces compost, a living area, two sleeping areas, and also an outdoor deck. Of course, each of these spaces is small and they all blend into one another which creates a cozy ambiance inside. This is accentuated by the warmth of the wood used for both the interior and the exterior of the Ursa tiny house.

Designer: Madeiguincho

Made from recycled paper, this tiny home explores sustainable architecture and low-impact construction!

Posted on 02/10/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Short Story is a single cubic building constructed using architectural theories like Raumplan’s to explore the use of sustainable building materials and low-impact construction methods.

Roundhouse is a curatorial platform that fosters public engagement across industries like architecture, archival research, and post-industrial site excavation. Roundhouse investigates urban change through public engagement missions by unveiling site-specific histories through creative site exploration, archival research, publication, and exhibitions. In Spring Valley, Nevada, the collective constructed an architectural prototype built to explore the contextual relationship between space, structure, and texture within a small accessory building called Short Story, a 2.4m by 2.4m desert dwelling.

Accruing nearly three weeks in construction time, Short Story was built in the same Territorial Revival architectural style as its adjacent buildings using sustainable building materials and a low-impact construction method. Clad in recycled paper and adobe, Short Story uses both materials like insulation and render for the walls. Designed and built using the Raumplan theory, Short Story comprises a single cubic volume with an interior space that’s divided into varying wooden tiers and quadrants. From different angles of the building, Short Story’s living spaces change in size and function, housing compact spaces that resemble sleeping nooks and even lofty atriums with high ceilings.

From the outside, Short Story appears like a simple, cubic shed that’s familiar in texture, build, and shape compared to nearby desert dwellings. While the outside does look familiar from afar, a closer look reveals the building’s changing gradient from bleached sandstone with wispy textures near the building’s base to rusty, brick red tones near the building’s top as a result of the cladding materials’ varying applied thickness. Moving inside, latticed, whitewashed wood framing expands the building into a multi-level, open-plan space where residents can climb between floors using a staircase formed out of rough-hewn logs.

Designer: Roundhouse Platform

This prefab tiny home is made sustainably from cross-laminated timber & gives major Japandi vibes!

Posted on 27/09/2021 by Chi Thukral

Prefabricated architecture minimizes construction waste, reduces carbon footprint, and has a quicker turnaround than a traditional home. Minima is a 215-square-foot (20-square-meter) prefab module designed to be a flexible structure to serve as a standalone tiny home or as an additional unit in the backyard that can be used as a home office or spacious guest house. It is constructed with CLT (cross-laminated timber) which is a sustainable material and cuts down on the carbon emissions that concrete produces. The modern micro-home is giving me major Japandi vibes!

The boxy exterior is clad with a skin of cypress battens and a steel roof which maintains its minimal look. The unit has a streamlined, modern profile that still feels warm and human-centric. The facade opens up with hardwood-framed glass doors that can slide over to reveal its Scandinavian and Japandi-inspired interior. It can be partially closed off with a hardwood-encased screen door or a translucent curtain.

Australian studio TRIAS designed the unit in collaboration with prefab manufacturer FABPREFAB. The aim was to not only make architecturally designed homes more accessible and affordable but to make prefabs more widely appealing. “We did a lot of research into the Australian and overseas markets. In Australia, the emphasis tends to be on low cost, whereas in Europe the emphasis is on quality and longevity. This aligns perfectly with the philosophy of our practice. We wanted to create something consciously good quality, but also to explore how to make a prefab house not look like a prefab,” says Jennifer McMaster, Director of TRIAS.

Minima doesn’t need a concrete foundation and instead uses a special type of ground screw that can ease relocation if necessary which heavily reduces the impact on the construction site’s surroundings. Since it is a modular design, you can add an extra module in a T-formation to double the area. The impressive prefab home could fit almost anywhere there might be open space creating more opportunities to build accessible and affordable communities that can be scaled.

The compact floor area is divided into various zones that group different functions together. For instance, “wet” areas like the kitchen and bathroom are on one side of the micro-house while the living and sleeping areas are concentrated into one flexible zone in the center of the home.

The interior walls, ceiling, and floor are covered with lots of cross-laminated timber (CLT) – a sustainable engineered wood product that involves layers of fast-growth timber that are glued perpendicular to each other, resulting in a structurally robust and fire-resistant material that not only looks good but is also perfect for prefabrication.

Everything in the home has been intentionally made to look seamless.”Keeping all the joints and lines as simple and seamless as possible is important in a small space. We’ve lived in tiny apartment spaces, so we know how critical those lines are in making a space feel larger,” adds Jonathon Donnelly, Director at TRIAS.

In the living area, there is plenty of built-in furniture to help save maximize space, like this integrated seating bench, which also has storage space tucked below and above. Right in the center, there’s a wall-to-floor cabinet that actually has a bed, table, and shelving integrated inside. During the day, the bed can be folded away, and a multifunctional table pulled out for eating or working on. At night, the bed can be pulled down to reveal a sizeable queen mattress, as well as lighting and storage behind.

The kitchen features a pared-down countertop that has all the essentials of the sink, stove, oven, range hood, concealed refrigerator, and plenty of storage. Cross-ventilation is helped along with the addition of another small door off to the side of the kitchen, and which also functions as a secondary entrance. There is a bathroom behind the kitchen and past a pocket door. The slate-gray tiles, in combination with the CLT cabinets, create a soothing, calming atmosphere, lit with help of a skylight over the shower.

“Something that’s always stuck with us is a finding from a 2018 Grattan Institute report into Australian cities: ‘The quickest way to double density is to add something small to every existing block.’ Small insertions can help retain the suburban character while adding enormously to social cohesion and housing,” says the team and that wonderful sentiment is what we need right now to guide us away from skyscrapers and towards sustainable architecture.

Designer: TRIAS

Wooden Architectural Designs functioning as sustainable + warm homes that will never go out of trend!

Posted on 25/09/2021 by Srishti Mitra

There’s something about wooden architecture that is simply so humble and endearing. Wood has been a material of choice for construction for ages galore. Wood ages beautifully – anything built with wood will retain the character of your house. And it also manages to incorporate an aura of warmth and serenity within the living space. The rustic and homely appeal of a wooden space instantly makes you feel at ease and welcomed. It’s a material of choice that has stood strong through the ages and continues to do so. Whether modern or traditional, wood can be bent and molded to create a living space of your choice and style. From a wooden treehouse constructed without a tree to a geometric wooden cabin that is perfect for a socially distant getaway – this collection of architectural designs will leave you mesmerized and completely in awe of the wonderful yet simple material that is wood!

Italian architects Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi probably also can’t wait to enjoy some downtime and therefore created the Mountain Refuge to express their desire for travel. It is a wooden, square, prefabricated cabin with an angular roof. While the geometric cabin is a structural contrast to its natural setting, it still blends in well while showing off its modern design. “The project acts as a contemporary interpretation of old traditional mountain refuges, bringing in architectural character and spatial quality,” say the designers. The wooden cabin comes in different modules and each has the capability to be flexible and expandable. It is made to be compact and optimizes the space while taking up the least in nature.

Designed by David and Jeanette Reiss-Andersen of Oslo-based Norske Mikrohus, Rast is a modern tiny home clad in dark-stained Norwegian spruce. It is constructed with Nordic weather conditions in mind – the roof can withstand heavy snowfall and the walls incorporate thick insulation made of wool, glass, and aluminum – all sustainable materials. On sunny winter days, occupants can stay warm and comfortable inside while still feeling tied to the outdoors. “The large window in the shower really puts you in touch with the natural surroundings,” David says.

Normalize adults living and chilling in treehouses because we are certainly going through a lot more than children and this is the escape we need! Cassiopeia is one such shelter that every grown-up dreams of having, it is a treehouse that was born in a garden without a tree for us to disconnect from the virtual world. It has multiple levels, a fire-man pole, a slide, a swing, a zip-line, a net bed, monkey bars, and a climbing wall in sculptural form with legs that grow in the garden!

Setting up camp has never looked so good and it setting up a minimal glamping cabin just got a whole lot easier thanks to Den! The cabin design studio has a range of flat-packed DIY-style kits that let you assemble your own A-frame cabin in a few days. The average size is 115-square-foot (10.68-square-meter) with models that are larger and smaller depending on what you are looking for. Once assembled, you can see the slanted wooden walls and a floor-to-ceiling triangular window just like how we drew a picture of a cabin as children. The space is minimal and can be transformed into a cozy getaway, a yoga studio, or a creative retreat! The prefab pieces for the cabin are made in New York and come with pre-drilled holes, all wooden structural parts that lock together, bolts, and even door hardware.

The Pod, described by TV host Peter Madison as a “love letter to Tasmania,” is a tiny home comprised of two living ‘pods’ merged together by a narrow row of skylights. Covering only 430sq-ft, the exterior of The Pod is wrapped in Tasmanian oak wood which is replaced with expansive, floor-to-ceiling windows around the back of the tiny home. Positioned on a hillside, the tiny home’s back pod rises on steel beams to merge with the front pod, giving the illusion that you’re “floating” above the ground, as described by Hansen.

Designed and built by Croxatto y Opazo Arquitectos, the holiday cabins are named La Loica and La Tagua and each comprises an individual footprint of less than 25 square meters. Initially conceived of as holiday homes positioned on the coastline of Santiago, La Loica and La Tagua are two-story cabins placed 80 meters above sea level. Getting as close to the Pacific Ocean as possible, the two cabins remain stationed atop the “Lobera,” a large mass of rock that juts out to sea and stands as a home to sea lions and other native sea-dwelling species. Inspired by the windy conditions that Matanzas has become famous for, Croxatto y Opazo Arquitectos played into the wind when designing their holiday cabins.

The Diamanten Cabin, which is positioned atop a cylindrical support pillar in Oppdal, Norway, was constructed within its mountainous, pre-existing framework. The architects with A38 Arkitekter centralized environmental harmony in designing their winter annex; adjacent log cabins punctuate corners of the valley where the diamond-shaped cabin perks. The final structure is visually enigmatic, but chameleon-like in its commitment to reinvigorating, yet respecting the community to which it belongs. Nestled nearby traditionally vibrant timber cabins, the Diamanten Cabin is unassuming in size, with a total of only a single, open room.

A Hungarian company called Hello Wood has designed a tiny minimalist cabin that you can assemble yourself for creative space solutions or just an escape from your living room. The prefabricated cabins start at $10,200 and have been crafted in a way that anyone can put together, it is truly the ultimate DIY project. With the tiny home market ‘growing’ rapidly, the Kabinka cabin is positioned to be like IKEA furniture – easy to assemble with an aesthetic that is loved by most. The Kabinka cabin comes in four sizes that range between 129 and 215 square feet. It is a tiny cabin but it has high ceilings – over 12 feet high actually – that bring a sense of spaciousness and luxury to the otherwise simple structure.

The cabin hides amidst a lush 75-acre property surrounded by a massive wooded area that is used for the business’s various other staying experiences. Payam Shalchian designed the 80-square foot cabin and also co-owns the B&B. The theme is ultra minimalistic – the exterior is a simple wooden frame and the interior only houses essential furniture. The luxury in this case is the immersive experience you have within nature. To truly bring the outside in, the majority of the walls and ceiling panel areas are made of transparent plexiglass. The cabin is basically a sleeping zone and has another supplementary 64-square foot cabin which is a bathhouse containing a shower and composting toilet.

Guambo studies architecture at Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica (UTI) in Ambato, Ecuador, and like most students, he just wanted a space for him to do projects while listening to loud music – that is how this tiny studio was born! To build his dream focus pod, he worked under the guidance of Al Borde, a local architecture studio that successfully completed the renovation of a deteriorated 18th-century house (!) in Ecuador. The main purpose was to be able to play loud music without disturbing the neighbors so Guambo used a traditional construction method known as ‘Bahareque’, a building system that involves weaving sticks and mud to construct compact walls, to make it sound-proof. Even though the exterior reflects the traditional design technique, the full glass window gives it a modern touch.

This wooden tiny house on wheels is designed to get you closer to nature while being sustainable!

Posted on 22/09/2021 by Chi Thukral

The pandemic has certainly made some of us want to leave behind the bustling city life we know and move into a tiny house. Why? Well, it is more affordable for first-time homeowners, it has a lower carbon footprint, and you can pick your views while staying socially distant from crowded cities! The tiny house movement is here to stay and Rast is another glimpse into its future. The 174-square-foot home on wheels is designed to immerse you in nature while pushing sustainable architecture as an accessible lifestyle choice merging your cabin-in-the-woods with a home to live in long-term.

Rast is clad in local timber because Norwegian spruce is light and weather resistant. It is also super lightweight which makes it easier for the team to set up the home in dense or remote areas and since it has wheels means it doesn’t leave any footprint. It has large windows and glass double doors that swing open and tie the interior to the outdoors while bringing flooding the space with natural light.

The dark-stained wood was purposely chosen for the exterior so it can seamlessly blend with the landscape. “Much of our inspiration came from the Norwegian hills, fjords, mountains, and lakes – our tiny home concept is based on being able to live in nature without interfering with it,” says Jeanette

The interior walls and ceiling feature a pale birch veneer and vinyl flooring both showing natural wood grain. The living area has a built-in convertible table and daybed to keep the space open. “The birch veneer has a beautiful glow when oiled,” comments David.

The living room daybed converts to a bed when it’s time to sleep. A built-in table at the foot of the bed folds in and can be used as a nightstand or shelf. “During the day, it works as a sofa and features a small built-in table that folds out and offers a place to enjoy a meal and the view,” adds the designer duo.

The secondary sleeping area, which is arranged with bunk beds, can accommodate up to four people. A small table pulls out from the foot of the lower bunk bed and offers a second compact dining area.

The bath and a secondary sleeping area, equipped with bunk beds, are arranged at one end of the open-plan kitchen.

A sculptural, built-in ladder leads to the upper bunk, and the bathroom lies next door.

The large bathroom features an open shower, a large window, and an incinerating toilet.

For storage, there are hidden drawers and shelving into built-in furniture pieces. Storage shelves can be found beneath the surface of the pull-out table and the living room daybed lifts up to reveal two large drawers tucked beneath it. The can hold anything from bedding to luggage and hiking equipment.

“We created Rast for anyone who wants to experience the outdoors close up, and in a sustainable way,” says David when talking about the compact wooden structure. It has all the appliances and systems you need if you plan to live a remote or an off-the-grid lifestyle.

David and Jeanette believe that tiny homes offer the ideal way to travel sustainably. They’re affordable, require less maintenance, and don’t harm the surroundings like their commercial counterparts. Rast builds on the minimalist trend and appeals to environmentally conscious people who want the freedom that comes with traveling and living sustainably – best of both worlds can be that simple!

Designer: Norske Mikrohus

This passive house features a living green roof that merges the home with its forested surroundings!

Posted on 21/09/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Hill House is a passive house designed and constructed by Snegiri Architects with a living green roof that blends the home seamlessly with its natural woodland surroundings.

Passive houses and green homes are rising in popularity, cropping up across the globe, and slowly, but steadily establishing a new standard for residence architecture. Photovoltaic panels, living roofs, and rainwater collection systems are some of the most common sustainable and energy-efficient elements that grace the outside and inside of such homes. Snegiri Architects, a firm based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, finished work on a passive residence called Hill House, complete with a living green roof that merges the home with the nearby forest.

Building new homes, especially passive houses, in dense woodlands without felling trees is a near-impossible task unless you incorporate them into the home’s layout. Managing to preserve the forested lot’s preexisting trees, Snegiri Architects built Hill House to be entirely integrated into the surrounding environment. Plotted with diverse plant life and shrubbery, Hill House’s living green roof sprawls with a grass carpet filled with stonecrop and dwarf plants including chamomile and sedum.

The gradual incline of Hill House’s green roof conceals the home’s structural presence, bringing the home inch by inch into the bordering woods. The rest of Hill House’s exterior strikes a balance between black-stained wood-paneled facades and natural, unstained wood-paneled eaves. With this contrast, the home blends naturally into its surroundings, but its interiors remain bright with light window accents.

From top to bottom, the Hill House undoubtedly reaches the energy efficiency standard set by passive house building techniques. The terrace and most of the rooms are oriented towards the home’s sunny side to collect the maximum amount of sunlight during the day and energy-saving windows prevent the heated or cooled air from leaving the home. The home is also ventilated with air recovery, and Swedish slab, monolith, mineral wool, and linseed oil-soaked larch all provide the home with insulation from its foundation to its roof.

Designer: Snegiri Architects

This sustainable house has an aquaponic system that connects a pond for edible fish & a rooftop garden!

Posted on 13/09/2021 by Chi Thukral

Think of the Welcome to the Jungle House (WTTJH) as a sanctuary for a modern sustainable lifestyle. It enables carbon-neutral living with the most luxurious and artistic aesthetic! It addresses climate change with a design that blends sustainability, landscape, fauna, and architecture for them to exist symbiotically. WTTJH is located in Sydney and the most interesting feature is the aquaponic rooftop masked within a heritage-meets-modernism interior style. This example of sustainable architecture shows us that the future is bright for environmentally conscious design without compromising on form or function.

WTTJH is built within a rejuvenated heritage façade of rendered masonry, steel, timber, and greenery – it is where Victorian row terrace housing meets and a post-industrial warehouse aesthetic. The two-story home was close to collapse and originally occupied the 90sqm triangular site. Due to strict heritage controls, it was untouched and in despair till the rejuvenation project by CPlusC brought it back to life in a way that was conducive towards a better future for the industry and the planet.

The original window openings have been framed in pre-rusted steel and juxtaposed with new openings framed in gloss white powder coat steel which adds a wonderful then-and-now element. A black photovoltaic panel array on the northern façade harnesses sunlight throughout the day and acts as a billboard for the sustainability in the architectural structure which is a contrast to the original heritage facade. The rooftop is made from steel planter beds that provide deep soil for native plants and fruit and vegetables. The garden beds are irrigated from the fishpond providing nutrient-rich water created by the edible silver perch (fish)!

The house features a glass inner skin that is fully operable from the outer punctuated masonry façade, providing an abundance of natural light and views while maintaining privacy. This interstitial zone also helps with passive thermal regulation across the upper floors with planter beds ‘floating’ in between the glass and masonry skins to provide cooling to internal spaces via transpiration. The floating planter beds are also an integrated structurally engineered solution to the lateral bracing needs of the masonry wall.

The journey from ground to roof begins with the raw textures of burnished concrete and fiber cement panels, ascending a steel and recycled timber stair to the bedroom and bathroom level finished in rich and warm timber boards lining the floors walls, and ceilings. The upper floor living space continues with timber flooring and a recycled timber island/dining bench to warm the space. The kitchen has been assembled from an array of machined and polished metals contrasting the concrete and timber finishes of the floors below. Unpolished stainless steel and brass and gold anodized aluminum glow and glean light revealing their factory finishes.

A colonnade of thin steel blade columns supports the roof above and has been deliberately staggered perpendicular from the building’s edge to provide shade from the afternoon sun to keep the building cool in Summer without the need for mechanical shading devices. Above are the hot-dip galvanized planter beds that form the roof structure in its entirety. These structural roof ‘troughs’ are the roof beams spanning up to 8.5M while holding deep soil for the planter beds, exposed at their bases to create the industrially raw ceiling finish below, a detail complimented by the factory finishes of the kitchens stainless steel and brass.

It is an architecture that explores active and passive systems, the poetic, the emotional, and the nurturing capacity of human beings to reverse the impact of climate change and to establish resilience through architectural design that addresses some of the profound pressures on the natural world. It is both a functional and a symbolic advocate for innovation design and sustainable living. It is the architecture of climate change activism where sustainability, landscape, fauna, and architecture exist symbiotically.

Climate change must be reversed, and human beings must become sustainable in every aspect of their lives. Conserving our resources and becoming more sustainable as a species is now critical to our very survival. Almost 100 years ago Le Corbusier famously said that ‘A house is a machine for living in’. If we are to survive the next 100 years a house must be ‘a machine for sustaining life’ and it must promote those values in its architectural expression to the public who largely consume architecture through the media where the image is everything. If we are to promote these values, they must be an intrinsic part of the conceptual fabric of a project.

Architecture that is not only beautiful: an architecture that generates and stores power; an architecture that harvests and recycles water; an architecture that produces fruit, vegetables, fish, and eggs; an architecture that recycles and reuses the waste it produces. Architecture nourishes the mind, body, and soul. Architecture where landscape, food, nature, garden, environment, energy, waste, water, and beauty exist symbiotically.

Designer: CplusC Architectural Workshop

This tiny passive home saves and creates space with an expandable roof and multifunctional furniture!

Posted on 12/09/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

The Brook is a tiny home in Rosebrook, Australia designed to be a passive house equipped with a fully off-grid solar panel system and expandable roof for lofty ceilings à la New York-style apartments.

We’ve seen countless tiny home designs throughout the years. Some might even think if you’ve seen one, then you’ve seen them all. How innovative can you get when you’re working with such a tiny space? If they really get creative, then architects often incorporate elements like hidden storage compartments, multifunctional furniture, and even expanding structural frames all to augment the home’s available living space. One small, 27sqm home in Rosebrook Australia called The Brook, designed by Small Not Tiny, incorporates each one of these elements and so much more to make the most of the home’s small build.