Tag Archives: Tiny Houses

25+ Shipping Container House Plans

Container homes are a very popular trend in design and architecture today. Using a storage container as a living area might seem like a wild idea, but you might be surprised at just how practical it can be. Modern shipping container homes are so sophisticated that they even rival the traditional home. You can have…

Cheap Off-Grid Cabin Built For Under $300

Alyssa Craft and Jesse Stafford completed a cheap off-grid cabin-add-on to the trailer they are living in while setting up their homestead in the Western US. The cabin was built to allow them to heat the air around the trailer and prevent the plumbing, and themselves, from freezing during the snowy winter months. The majority…

Visit A Small Writer’s Shed & Haven In London

A visit to Surman Weston reveals a delightful small writer’s shed situated in the heart of London. Surman Weston has indicated their firm was “…commissioned by an author and illustrator to design & build a ‘writer’s shed’ in the borough of Hackney. Capitalizing on their multi-disciplinary backgrounds the firm acted as designers, project managers, and lead…

Remarkable $20K Houses From Rural Studio

Auburn University’s design team at Rural Studio has achieved the lofty goal of building affordable houses for somebody living below the poverty line. Here’s how: The team did so by completing two pilot project houses priced at $20,000 apiece. Materials for the homes totaled $14,000 each. The Design Challenge For over a decade, architecture students at…

Tiny House Trends: Homelessness & Sustainability

Having been interested in tiny houses for a while now, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by new developments in the movement. One of the more recent developments in the many uses for tiny houses is making permanent housing the first, most crucial part of a comprehensive strategy to help counteract homelessness. Home ownership is…

Famous Seattle Spite House Sells For Big Money

The tiny 830 square foot home known as “the Spite House” in the Montlake section of Seattle sold recently for $397,500- nearly $500/ft., which is pretty good for the area. As for why it’s called the Spite House? Seattle’s Spite House was originally constructed to irritate its owner’s next-door neighbor … who also happened to…

Skinny Houses Adapt to Site Constraints

One of the most important decisions that gets made when designing a building, if not THE most important decision, is where to build it.  Site conditions can affect how big a house is, its shape, its orientation across cardinal directions, and- as such- how energy efficient the home has the potential to be. The skinny…

Shipping Container Home Can Triple In Size

G-pod Shipping Container Home

There have been a plethora of posts about shipping containers hitting the web recently – and why not? Shipping containers are cheap, durable, and available– and are as easy to ship as a traditional RV.  This particular shipping container home is a bit different, though: it can expand! Designed by G-pod, a Hong Kong and…

Prefab Resources, Tiny House Ideas, and Small Dwelling Design Links

Check out the prefab community blooming online these days! Tiny House Village is trying to connect communities of creative small dwellings. Ideas are abound for these eco communities with Resources For Life’s Small House Society. Tiny House design has a great set of resources all linked here as well. Check out the plethora of architectural…