Tag Archives: tiny home on wheels

This DIY tiny home on wheels is a modernist haven inspired by desert architecture!

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Lola is a tiny home on wheels that’s part of designer Mariah Hoffman’s larger multi-disciplinary design studio and brand Micro Modula, one that explores “home, place, and the self.”

There hasn’t been a more opportune time for tiny homes on wheels to take the spotlight. In an effort to feel closer to nature and embrace more eco-friendly lifestyles, we all seem to be downsizing these days and itching to travel without leaving our home comforts behind.

Enter tiny homes on wheels, small living spaces stripped down to their bare essentials that can move anywhere the wind blows, so long as there’s an open road. Joining the movement, self-taught spatial designer and overall creative, Mariah Hoffman planned and constructed her own tiny home on wheels called Lola.

Over the span of five years, Hoffman gradually transformed an old utility trailer into a 156-square-foot mobile tiny home. Born out of a daydream to build her own home, Hoffman built Lola to “learn all the necessary skills for [her] personal and creative survival.”

Particularly spurred by the essentialist edge of desert modernism, Hoffman turned to construction materials that aesthetically met the bill and also provided some functional elements for the home to brace the seasons as well as the local critters.

Located in sunny San Diego, Lola’s external facades are sided with exterior-grade, Shou sugi ban plywood that was chosen for a minimalist, charred black profile and for its resistance against damage brought on by bugs, fire, and the weather.

Outfitted with solar panels for electricity and power, Hoffman positioned Lola “so that [the] largest windows face North/South to maximize passive solar,” which means, “the low winter brings bright morning days,” as she describes in an Instagram post.

To complement the home’s dark exterior, Hoffman clad the open-plan interior walls in light-toned birch panels. Merging the bright walls with exposed black-steel structural framing, Hoffman planned the interior in honor of the midcentury design that helped inspire Lola’s final form.

Then, throughout the home, Hoffman integrated multifunctional furniture and hidden storage spaces to optimize the available living space, helping the tiny home on wheels to not feel so tiny.

Designer: Mariah Hoffman x Micro Modula

Mariah Hoffman planned and built Lola over the span of five years. 

Lola was transformed into a tiny home on wheels from a disused trailer.

The post This DIY tiny home on wheels is a modernist haven inspired by desert architecture! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This vintage camper from 1985 is making a comeback with accordion extensions that triple its size!

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De Markies is a vintage camper circa 1985 with accordion-like expansions that triple the camper’s size with the push of a button.

Since the start of stay-at-home orders, campers have made quite the comeback in the world of modern camping. The campers coming out from recent years have been some of the most versatile and compact designs we’ve seen in years. A few years back and ahead of its time, Dutch architect Eduard Böhtling submitted his transforming De Markies camper design to 1985’s Temporary Living architecture competition. The type of camper that can be reintroduced in years to come and still send a tingle down any camper’s spine, De Markies is a tiny home on wheels that can triple in size with the push of a button.

Ten years after the Temporary Living competition, De Markies saw its first prototype and received 1996’s Rotterdam Design Prize’s Public Prize for it. Fast forward to 2021 and De Markies is still turning heads. Built with accordion-like expansions, De Markies’s shape begins as a cubic camper on the road and triples in size to form a complete semicircle.

Once De Markies expands into its final shape, the camper’s main bedroom can be found inside of its opaque orange awning, while a sunroom comes into shape underneath the van’s transparent awning. Inside the caravan, a kitchen, bathroom, and sitting room come with all the amenities needed for a comfortable retreat on the road, including a stove, sink, countertop, storage space, and tables.

Constructed to withstand most elements, Böhtling found durability in plastic cladding for De Markies’s roof. Unfurled into its semicircular shape, the awnings find privacy on one side through an opaque orange plastic covering, and a sun-soaked room on the other side with a transparent plastic covering. Slated for next year’s Geneva Architecture Exhibition, De Markies is still making its rounds.

Designer: Eduard Böhtling

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This Scandinavian tiny home on wheels comes with off-grid features for an eco-friendly escape to nature!

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Poland-based Redukt built a tiny home on wheels that combines simplistic design with a clever layout to produce a mobile tiny home ideal for a family of four traveling through backcountry roads on a summer vacation.

When it comes to tiny homes, simplicity is key. It’s all about consolidated design and multifunctional interior elements. We’ve seen dining room tables and booths transform into daybeds and roofs unfurl into loft bedrooms. Tiny homes bring out the most innovative home features from designers that hinge on keeping the living space free from too much clutter.

Poland-based Redukt, a tiny mobile home company, found sophistication and an open-plan layout through simplistic and versatile design for their off-grid-prepared tiny home on wheels.

Prepared for all elements, Redukt’s tiny home on wheels is thermalized with oiled pine boards that give the home a tidy, yet natural personality. Dissolving the barrier between the outdoors and interior space, the tiny home comes with twin glass doors that are just short of reaching floor-to-ceiling heights.

Keeping an off-center pentagonal shape, Redukt’s tiny home maintains an elegant look that’s prepared for all four seasons through the home’s roof topped off with galvanized metal sheets. Built to last, the metal sheets and pinewood facade were chosen as they only look better with time.

Outfitted with all the elements necessary for off-grid living, the team at Redukt equipped their tiny home with solar installation to generate electricity, a gas installation, and a composting toilet.

Measuring 7.20 x 2.55 x 3.95m, Redukt’s tiny home keeps enough space for an open, large living space, where additional sleeping arrangements can be placed either to accompany or replace a dining and living room.

Designed for a couple with two children, the living space can remain for their kids while the adults can escape to a semi-low mezzanine accessible by a set of folding staircases. In addition to the bedrooms, a large kitchenette, bathroom, and plenty of storage space make living in Redukt’s tiny home feel a lot larger than you’d think.

Designer: Redukt

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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 tiny home features a bedroom loft and fold-out deck to balance comfort with adventure!

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The Draper is a tiny home from Colorado-based RV company, Land Ark that features a mudroom, clerestory windows, and versatile interior design elements to find a balance between adventurous spontaneity and homelike comfort.

If you’re interested in tiny homes, chances are you’re itching for a getaway. Across the world, tiny homes have become the minimalist solution for those of us looking to downsize and relocate in the meantime. While some are built into the landscape they rise above, other tiny homes are wheeled to their new locations.

The Draper, a new tiny home from Colorado-based RV company, Land Ark finds a minimalist, yet adventurous spirit through a balance of Scandinavian-approached interior design elements and thoughtfully modern exterior features.

From the outside, the Draper exudes mystery with black corrugated steel cladding on all sides. Shaped almost like a reversed trapezoid, the Draper unfurls its all-black exterior to reveal a Cumaru fold-down deck constructed from renewable Brazilian hardwood. When unfolded, the Cumaru deck provides the Draper with a cozier appearance that immediately asserts the RV as a homey oasis designed to get away from the humdrum of everyday life.

Entering the tiny home from the deck’s sliding, floor-to-ceiling twin doors, residents are welcomed by the home’s kitchen and dining area. The dining area, which doubles as a living room, has a built-In, U-Shaped sofa that transforms into a queen-sized sleeper sofa where guests can sleep.

Wrapped around the entirety of the interior space, white-washed pinewood gleams with natural sunlight and brightens the inside to provide a warm, golden glow against the black steel when seen from the outside.

Entering Draper from the opposite end, guests can shake off their boots in the tiny home’s mudroom. Outfitted with amenities such as washer and dryer units and an entryway bench, the mudroom comes with plenty of closet space and built-in shelves to keep the rest of the home free of clutter.

Sleeping up to four people, the Draper features a bedroom loft that’s accessible via a custom-built oakwood ladder located on the opposite end of the dining area. Tracing the home’s upper walls and ceiling, recessed light fixtures, and clerestory windows brighten the home’s interior with pools of natural sunlight and lamplight.

Designer: Land Ark

During the day, the dining area features a spring table with telescopic tubing and a corner booth.

Come night, the dining area transforms into a queen-sized sleeping sofa for guests of Draper.

The post This tiny home features a bedroom loft and fold-out deck to balance comfort with adventure! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This micro house-on-wheels built to withstand extreme weather conditions was also designed for off-grid living!

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The Nomad is a compact mobile camper built to withstand all the elements, hot or cold, and for off-grid living, equipped with everything from a solar system to a composting toilet and water tanks.

These days, the nomad lifestyle has the spotlight. Going off-grid and mobile during this era of WFH has never been more tempting. With sustainability and getting away at the forefront of our minds, companies have delivered on tiny camper designs, merging eco-consciousness with the mobile lifestyle. One company, in particular, Quebec-based Minimaliste has been designing micro houses-on-wheels for some time now, and their latest model, the Nomad, is an even tinier camper built with off-grid capabilities and for the most extreme of weather conditions.

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.

While the Nomad might be shorter in length than Minimaliste’s previous camper models, measuring in at 165 feet2, it makes a home out of the space it still has. The one-bedroom camper also features a kitchen, bathroom, dining area, and living area all within its steel-clad frame. When entering the Nomad, the kitchen and dining area greet you with walnut laminate finishes, and optic white walls, with black coated handles and accents dotted throughout. Equipped with high-quality appliances, the kitchen features a propane boiler and water heater, a Furrion 12V refrigerator, and a Furrion propane stove oven.

Moving into the bedroom and bathroom, the same walnut laminate and optic white paint are seen throughout each room, but the bedroom’s ceiling rises to seven feet to ensure plenty of headroom even for taller guests. The bedroom is all about storage, featuring integrated storage underneath and around the bed, where an additional water tank can be found for off-grid living. Finally, the bathroom hosts all the amenities one might need for when nature calls: an optional flush or composting toilet, a decent-sized vanity unit with a medicine cabinet, and a 24 × 36 tub shower, as well as a 12V fan that exhausts and refilters the air.

Designer: Minimaliste

Integrated storage decks out the Nomad’s bedroom, ensuring enough room even for one of the camper’s water tanks. 

Air conditioning units and insulation create a comfortable interior temperature throughout the year and changing seasons. 

The kitchen even comes with a built-in 2-in-1 washer-dryer unit.

The dining area transforms into sleeping accommodations for two children or one adult when not in use during the night. 

This tiny home inspired by Scandinavian design comes with a small greenhouse and a porch swing!

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Elsa is a 323-square-foot tiny home defined by Scandinavian design that’s anchored with natural, earthy elements, like an outdoor, teeming garden and greenhouse attachment situated right beside a pergola-covered porch and attached swing for picturesque summer evenings spent in the garden.

For all of their innovative architectural feats and resource efficiency, tiny homes can’t seem to shake their tininess. That is until Elsa dropped in. While most of their appeal comes from their small size, when stretched to their edges, tiny homes can feel like small chateaus–spacious even. Designed and constructed by the small family-operated luxury tiny home building company called Olive Nest, Elsa is a not-so-tiny, 323-square-foot tiny home on wheels with an attached greenhouse, garden, and porch swing.

Elsa comprises 323-square-feet of living space while an exterior 85-square-foot trailer attachment that keeps a pergola-covered porch, attached swing, and even a greenhouse. The natural wood exterior attachment merges with the tiny home’s cedar shiplap, anchoring the home with earthy simplicity, as described by Melodie Aho, daughter to Mary Susan Hanson and Randy Hanson, the trio behind Olive Nest. Scandinavian design, an aesthetic that embraces clean and mostly unadorned, yet functional design, defines Elsa from inside, out. In direct contrast to the natural cedar shiplap, the left side of the house features standing-seam metal exterior siding, and just above the cedar shiplap section, a standing-seam metal pitched roof lengthens the inside loft bedroom ceiling.

Echoing the exterior’s natural wood personality, white-painted shiplap line Elsa’s inside walls and are brightened by natural sunlight that pours in through fourteen windows on the home’s first floor. To maintain Elsa’s lofty appeal, Olive Nest describes, “We used lots of windows and kept the ceiling high for an open, airy look.” The kitchen especially feels open, with optic-white paneling and a gleaning quartz countertop that sparkles with natural sunlight ricocheting through the windows and glass shelving. The white-painted cedar shiplap continues throughout the home, rising even to the top floor loft bedroom where a queen-size bed is framed by six more windows.

From the outside, Elsa welcomes residents and guests with a teeming porch garden and greenhouse, where you can relax on the porch swing. Then, the inside radiates a mellowed-down natural look with white-painted cedar shiplap that’s brightened up with natural sunlight. Throughout the home, accents like live-edge wood slabs and custom leather and brass fixtures work to remind residents of Elsa’s earthy simplicity, even in the details.

Designer: Olive Nest Tiny Home

A cozy reading room bordered by expansive windows draws in plenty of natural sunlight. 

Upstairs, the loft’s bedroom is framed with six windows that brighten the queen-size bed’s white fabrics and the room’s white shiplap.

The kitchen trades in a worn white-painted shiplap look for optic white panels that merge with a sparkling quartz countertop.

Live-edge wooden slabs form the home’s staircase that leads to the loft bedroom. 

Outside, the garden teems with plant life and flowers to remind residents and guests of the home’s primary inspiration: nature.

The greenhouse attachment buzzes with natural light outside and doubles as a privacy screen for the front porch. 

This tiny home on wheels is solar powered net-zero solution designed by an actual architect!

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Transportable tiny homes are complex operations, to say the least. Designing them to be sustainable makes building them that much more of an intricate process. First Light Studio, a New Zealand-based architecture group built their own tiny home with help from a local company Build Tiny, Ohariu, checking all of the above boxes. Built to be net-zero through several sustainable features and compact enough to meet all NZTA regulations for mobile homes.

Ohariu was built by First Light Studio and Build Tiny from a client’s brief calling for, “a refined tramping lodge on wheels.” That’s code for hiking, for all us Americans. Since the tiny home would primarily be used for hiking trips and traveling throughout the outdoors, Ohariu was built to be adaptable and versatile above all else. Inside, the living spaces are described by the architects at First Light Studio as being, “more a large and very detailed piece of furniture than a traditional house build, the fit-out [focusing] on the things that are important and necessary.”

Catering to the necessities and casual family pastimes, the tiny home is doused in modular and multifunctional design that’s surrounded by creamy poplar plywood walls and silvery fittings that add a touch of refinement to an otherwise bare interior. Each furniture piece inside Ohariu doubles as storage to maintain an open, clutter-free interior where the tiny home’s family would bond over pastimes like cooking, playing card games, and enjoying the surrounding landscape. Featuring a chef’s kitchen, Ohariu comes with plenty of prep space for cooking and integrates tilt-up tabletops to make even more for when there’s company. Outside, Ohariu is coated in a stealthy ebony corrugate to match its lightweight mobility, supported by aluminum joinery, lights, and utilities that were given the same ebony finish. Ohariu’s roof is asymmetrical with six solar panels lined up on its longer side and a mezzanine bedroom cozying up beneath its sloped short side.

Entirely powered by the solar panels that make a grid on the roof, Ohariu is net-zero, featuring amenities like an LPG gas cylinder, LED lighting, low-water usage fittings, as well as a composting toilet. Enhancing the tiny home’s sustainable build, the materials used to construct Ohariu are recyclable for the most part and low-maintenance, durable, and locally sourced.

Designer: First Light Studio x Build Tiny

Ohariu features expansive french doors, opening up the interior to the outside environment for endless views while traveling.

Coated in ebony corrugate, Ohariu travels from one excursion to the next, never losing its stealthy personality.

With plenty of open interior space, when the french doors open up, the interior seamlessly blends with the outside.

Poplar plywood line the walls and furniture of Ohariu’s interior living spaces for bright, sunlight-drenched room.

The chef’s kitchen features plenty of integrated storage and even a tilt-up tabletop to make more room for kitchen prep.

The mezzanine bedroom is located near the roof’s pitched, shorter side.

Plenty of broad windows line the sides of Ohariu to really brighten the space.

This ultra modern tiny home comes with a full-sized kitchen and high ceilings to make it feel anything but tiny!

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The recent surge in popularity over tiny homes is arguably the best thing to come out of 2020. Just the other day I noticed a tiny home in mint condition parked right in front of a house for sale and I couldn’t help but consider making the switch myself. Tiny homes on wheels are ideal for smaller families, single households, or couples hoping to ditch lifestyles filled with excess for a type of tiny living that makes thriftiness and sustainability their top priorities. Living Big in a Tiny House, a YouTube channel that documents those who have successfully made the jump from large-scale city living to eco-conscious tiny living, recently showcased a couple’s tiny home in Australia that doesn’t feel so tiny.

Just like the rest of us, Matt and Lisa of Tailored Tiny Co. have been dreaming about tiny homes for quite some time and Living Big in a Tiny House caught up with them soon after they constructed one of their own. Nestled high above an Australian forest, Matt and Lisa’s jet-black, two-floor tiny home was constructed by the couple with help from a few friends. The tiny home’s black metal siding surely stands out, but amidst high eucalyptus treetops, it offers a more inconspicuous appeal, tying it up artfully with recycled hardwood trimming for the home’s protruding gables. Matt and Lisa’s home-on-wheels measures almost 30 feet in length and just about eight feet in width – the ceiling reaches sweeping heights of 14 feet, slightly above average for the conventional tiny home. But then tiny homes are anything but conventional. Coming from a builder’s background, the couple brought modern amenities to their tiny home such as cable, electricity, and running water, as well as a few playful outdoor features like an attached cat’s run.

Walking through the home’s front door, it’s obvious that Matt and Lisa took full advantage of the interior space to include a spacious den, bathroom, dual storage area, and full kitchen. The den features a roomy loveseat and flat screen, along with a biophilic lighting fixture that laces plantlife between grids on a recycled steel barricade. At the opposite end of the home’s single hallway, the bathroom is impressive for a tiny home as it appears larger than most – broad mirrors reflect the bathroom’s double-door shower – and comes equipped with an underground septic system to provide flush for the toilet. Matt and Lisa also enjoy a full kitchen with a deep sink, compact dishwasher, four-burner gas stove, and microwave on one side, and then an oven and refrigerator merge snugly into the open space beneath the staircase. Occupying the full 14-feet available, Matt and Lisa integrated a cozy loft, where the master’s king-sized bed for Matt and Lisa and the guest loft are kept. Plenty of skylights also offer warm, natural lighting to permeate the home and an expansive outdoor deck provides this tiny home with enough space to accommodate visitors. And yes, we’d like to visit, please.

Designer: Tailored Tiny Co.