Canadian Tiny House With a Cool Deck

The company Greenmoxie of Toronto, Canada recently unveiled a sustainable tiny home, which can withstand even the harsh conditions of a Canadian winter. The home is cozy on the inside, and looks like a quaint cabin from the outside. It also features a unique drawbridge deck, which extends the living area very nicely.

The home is 30 ft long, 8.5 ft wide and 13.5 ft high (9 m by 2.6 m by 4m), which yields 340 sq ft (31.6 sq m) of interior space. It was built using reclaimed and salvaged materials, including wood from a demolished old barn. The interior was left as open as possible, with the sofa and shelving placed close to the walls instead of cluttering up the central space. The home also features an RV-style table surface, which can be used as a dining table or a coffee table.

The kitchen is quite spacious for a tiny home, and features a good amount of counter space and a large sink. The bathroom is also quite spacious, and is fitted with a composting toilet, and a shower. The bedroom is located in a loft, which is accessible via a set of storage stairs. Windows were placed in a way that allows excellent cross ventilation. The home is heated by a mini-woodstove and a propane heater.

The home is fitted with a rooftop mounted solar power array, while there is also a rainwater catchment system that features a 200-liter barrel for collecting the rainfall. The home is also equipped with a greywater holding tank that allows for the recycling of water.

The exterior is clad in blackened cedar, which was treated using the Japanese shou sugi ban method of charring. This method is great for preserving the wood, as well as making it fire- and pest-resistant. The wooden drawbridge deck can be lowered or lifted with the help of an electric motor.

This tiny home costs $65,000, which is quite steep for a tiny home. Although this one can be set up and used completely off-the-grid.

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Tiny Studio That Works as an Office or Even a Home

European cities are even more densely populated than US ones, and finding a place that's comfortable and all your own can sometimes be quite a challenge. Garden sheds are a popular solution to this conundrum. The one pictured above was designed by architect Tjeerd Bloothoofd of the Dutch firm Bloot Architecture. It is located near The Hague, in the Netherlands, and it is a very modern and ingeniously designed tiny studio.

This tiny studio measures just 280 sq ft (26 sq m), but it has all the necessary amenities. The interior is comprised of a single room, which is furnished with a working table, a large shelving unit and a sofa bed. The studio also boasts of a kitchenette and a bathroom, which features a toilet, sink and shower. The kitchen features a cleverly placed counter, which gives the sense that the space is much bigger than it really is. It is fitted with a fridge, stove and sink.

The intended function of this building was to serve as a home office, though it could easily also be used as a guesthouse, or even a tiny home. Thanks to the large skylight, the space is flooded with natural light. The exterior is clad in untreated wood, which will weather naturally over time and cause this structure to blend seamlessly with the garden in which it is located.

The home features underfloor heating, and it could also be fitted with solar panels, and even a green roof, which would insulate it even better. According to the designer, the basic version of this tiny studio could be built for just $30,000, though with the extra features requested by the client, the price of this one was $44,000.

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Imaginative Off-The-Grid Tiny Home

A large part of the appeal of tiny homes lies in the unique design that these bite-sized dwellings offer. And the so-called Moon Dragon, recently created by the tiny home designer Zyl Vardos of Olympia, Washington is certainly one of the more imaginative and unique small homes we've seen in a long time. It looks like something from a fairytale, and can function completely independently of the grid.

The Moon Dragon is comprised of a 9 x 24 ft (2.7 x 7.31 m) main floor and a 9 x 13 ft (2.7 x 4 m) sleeping loft, and has a total footprint of 13.1 x 9 x 24 ft (4 x 2.7 x 7.3 m). Almost the entire exterior of the home is clad in Onduvilla shingles. The Dutch-style front door was hand built, and opens into a cozy and spacious living area. A wood-burning stove is to be installed here to provide heat for the entire home.

The kitchen features plenty of counter space (made of laminated oak) for such a tiny dwelling. It is also equipped with a five-burner range cooker, an energy-efficient fridge, two ovens, and a pantry. There is also an energy-efficient washing machine installed in this area of the home.

The bathroom is located at the rear of the home and features a composting toilet, as well as a concrete panel-lined shower and a hand-made sink. The bedroom is located in the loft, which is accessible via a storage stair. The loft is large enough to fit a double bed with room to spare, two closets, and its 5.5 ft (1.67 m) headspace is also quite impressive.

All the cabinetry and walls of the Moon Dragon were built using mahogany ply, while cedar tongue and groove composite was used to create the arched ceiling. Cork was used for the flooring. The home gets its power from harvesting solar energy, though it can also be hooked up to the grid.

Given the amount of work and materials that have gone into creating this home, it is quite pricy (as you would expect) and sells for about $96,000.

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House Built Using the Soil on Which it Stands

Our forbearers used what was on hand to build their homes and shelters, and striving for a more sustainable world inevitably means that we have to get back to those basics. A great example of doing just that is the so-called Casa Candaleria, which was designed by Cherem Arquitectos. It is located near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and was built using primarily the earth on which it stands.

The home is perhaps not the most attractive or unique example of modern architecture, but it is very functional and sustainable. It was built using rammed earth, which gives it a unique color. They also used wood, concrete tile, stone, and glass in the construction.

Using the soil they found on-site in the construction process greatly offset a large part of the home's carbon footprint, while also substantially reducing costs. Building out of rammed earth is a very old technique, which involves compressing damp earth into a mold then letting it dry. This material is not as strong as concrete, but it still works very well in home construction, though it is also a lot more time intensive.

Rammed earth has the added benefit of having very good thermal mass, which offers a high level of insulation. It actually naturally cools the home during the day, and heats it during the night. In a climate such as the one in Mexico, no other insulation was needed.

The home features ample glazing in the living area, which is separated from the other living quarters by a covered outdoor hallway, which extends into a wooden deck that looks great for lounging on. The rest of the home doesn't have many windows, likely to prevent solar heat gain, though the ones that they did install are large floor-to-ceiling ones. Judging from the photos these feature wooden shutters, which are likely very effective at keeping the home cool.

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Clever Tiny Shipping Container Home

It seems like shipping container architecture is getting a revival of sorts, despite all the drawbacks and criticisms of this form of architecture. These include the fact that containers are just too narrow, as well as too toxic to be suitable for people to live in. They also need a lot of reinforcing once you start cutting them up to create windows or join them together to make bigger homes. With the latter there is also the question of whether all the work required doesn't actually eliminate most of the sustainability of this type of architecture. However, a lot of people still love the simplicity and minimalism of shipping container homes, and one such is certainly Shane Blind of New Zealand. He recently completed his shipping container home which is pictured above and which at first glance does not appear to be made out of a container at all.

Shane used a single, 20-foot shipping container to create his modern home. he also added two pop-out units along the sides, which solved the problem of the container being too narrow. Shane uses this so-called “Pod-Tainer” as a guesthouse, so it's not his full time home. But the architectural solutions he employed would make if highly suitable as such.

He didn't want to fit the home with foldable or stow-away elements, which led him to create the two pop-out units on the sides. The first 6 by 3 foot (1.8 by 1 m) pop out contains the living area, while the other one, which is right across it contains the bathroom. The latter is quite spacious and features a sink, toilet, and shower, which has enough headroom for a 6 ft man to shower in comfortably. The home also features a kitchenette, which is fitted with a portable stove, refrigerator and a microwave. This area also features a dining table, which could easily be used as a working space. The bedroom is housed in one end of the pod.

This is certainly a great example of shipping container architecture at it's finest, especially since it eliminated most of the drawbacks of using cargo containers as building blocks. It also only cost him $20,000 to build, though he did most of the work himself over a period of about two months.

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Couple Creates Cozy Home in a Van

Full time traveling, at least for a while, is the dream of many, and artist Kelsey and journalist Corbin of Steps to Wander have made it a reality. They converted an old Ford E-350 El Dorado Encore camper van into a cozy home, which they can easily take on the road. The young couple from Portland, Oregon, are currently living in the van full time as they travel east along the US-Canadian border.

They purchased the van for $3,800. For that price they got one that was mechanically sound, and also had many cool and useful features, such as clerestory windows, a roof pop-up in the center, which offers more headroom, as well as a kitchen with an oven and a shower- and toilet-equipped bathroom.

It took them five months to make this van into a full-time home. They started the process by first stripping everything down, fix all that needed fixing, and clean off the mold and dirt that had accumulated. They also custom built all the furniture for their so-called Wander Wagon. This includes a dinette area with storage in the seats, and a couch that can be turned into a queen-sized bed.

They had some trouble along the way, which also extended the time it took to take their new home on the road. They were struck by a driver making an illegal left turn, and at first the insurance company didn't want to pay for the repairs, since the Wander Wagon was gutted at the time. They were eventually able to sort it out favorably and finish the renovation.

They spent less than $10,000 on this renovation and the result is a comfortable mobile home, which they plan to live in while they explore the Americas and Canada. They are documenting their journey on their YouTube channel.

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