Wood Works When your anthropologist client’s notion of home is shaped both by a single-room hut in a West African village and the tiny New York City apartment she has inhabited since 1980, you’d better get very comfortable with working in cramped quarters. Such was the case when Brooklyn architect Tim Seggerman was tapped to renovate a moldering brownstone studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for a college professor. The apartment, a 240-square-foot shoebox with a sleeping loft over the kitchen, was in dismal shape, without a true line or flush surface. “You couldn’t imagine a place that was more messed up,” says Seggerman, a man of serene bearing who might easily be confused with the actor Tom Skerritt. His solution was to insert what he calls a “crafted jewel box” into the undersize space, creating an enveloping cabin of blond woods.
Park House by Another Apartment Japanese studio Another Apartment has completed a house with an asymmetric roof on a narrow site in suburban Tokyo. Constructed across the street from a local park, the three-storey house has a glazed facade intended to offer views out towards the trees. "I started to think about creating a comfortable space where the attraction of park extends in," says architect Tsuyoshi Kobayashi of Another Apartment. A garage and bathroom take up most of the ground floor of Park House, so the architect located the living room and bedroom on the middle storey then added a mezzanine loft beneath the angled roof. A ladder connects the two upper floors, while wooden staircase treads lead up from the ground floor, beginning with a chunky triangular block. "With a light impression, the stairs look like thin plates appearing from the wall," says Kobayashi. Galvanised steel panels clad the exterior of the house and fold up over the roof. See more Japanese houses » Photography is by Koichi Torimura.
Arizona couple moves into tiny tiny home — They’ve gone from paying $1,500 monthly mortgage to $350 a month INCLUDING utilities clotheslinetinyhomes.com Carrie and Shane Caverly ditched a traditional living space for this tiny, 204-square-foot home. Carrie and Shane Caverly have said good riddance to the mortgage payments that pester many Americans, opting instead to live in an eco-friendly house-on-wheels they built from scratch. At 204 square feet, it’s a tight squeeze. But the Colorado couple says the venture has opened them up to a simpler sort of living. “I know what it’s like to have a big house with a tremendous amount of stuff,” Shane told the New York Daily News. “This culture of acquiring more is not necessarily a healthy way to live.” clotheslinetinyhomes.com The house is built on a gooseneck trailer. Carrie, an architectural designer, and Shane, a contractor, were thinking about moving into a tiny home ever since they met in 2009. "I got absolutely tired of it, all the interest I was paying,” Shane said. clotheslinetinyhomes.com Carrie Caverly uses a swivel desk in her living room. On a mobile device?
the eco perch – a luxury tree house designed by east sussex-basd design, architecture and construction firm Blue Forest, the Eco Perch is basically a luxury tree house. using all natural materials, the house blends in with the surrounding environment – making it part of the landscape. the structure can be fully set up within five days and takes little site prepping beforehand. within the house, there is a kitchen, dining + living areas, and a bedroom. they claim it can comfortably accommodate 4 people. the outdoor deck is also an important part of the house as the deck wraps around a giant tree, providing shade. if you’ve got the extra cash – about $90,000 extra in cash- this would be the perfect little getaway or weekend house. i mean, this is definitely the most luxurious tree house i’ve ever seen. the Eco-pPrch is a great example of how mixing contemporary design elements with the natural living environment can make your space stunning. all images belong to blue forest
HOTELLO. Somnia et Labora. A Portable Office / Hotel Room Designed for daskonzept Will be Presented at FuoriSalone 2013. — Conceptual Devices The 20th Century left vast, abandoned, spaces in our cities. Warehouses, factories, military barracks have been built and abandoned in a relatively short period of time. Now, the contemporary city is elaborating new strategies to re-inhabit these empty shells. In collaboration with the visual Artist Roberto de Luca, I have designed, for the Swiss firm daskonzept, Hotello: a unit of 4 sqm, conceived to extemporarily inhabit the empty lofts of the contemporary city. Hotello is a portable space, packed into a trunk. Hotello will be presented at the Fuori Salone 2013 in Milano at the Fabbrica del Vapore in via Procaccini 4 from 9-14 of April 2013. The Fabbrica del Vapore exhibition space will be transformed into an open work environment which visitors are welcome to use. Das Konzept is a laboratory for design, retail, and production focusing on new ways to conceive the work environment. Related posts:
Course Catalog | Design Build Courses Vermont Come to the Tiny House Fair to learn about and celebrate tiny houses! Join leaders of the tiny house movement, including Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, and Derek (Deek) Diedricksen of Relaxshacks. Whether you've just begun to explore tiny houses or already live in one, there are presentations you'll enjoy: how to design and build a tiny houseclever cabinetry and finish carpentrydesign and construction for specific climates finding and building with recycled materialssolar power composting toiletsthe tiny house movementcreating a community Dates: The fair starts Friday evening 6/14/2013 with dinner and a speaker, and ends Sunday afternoon 6/16/2013. Workshop Schedule: See for a full schedule of workshops and presenters. Meals: The registration package includes Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast lunch and dinner, and Sunday breakfast and lunch. Lodging Options: Cabins (limited availability) $50 for two nights.
Hut on Sleds by Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects As the tides erode the northern coast of New Zealand, this house on a sled by architects Crosson Clarke Carnachan can be towed off the beach and out of harm's way (+ slideshow). Located within a designated erosion zone on the Coromandel Peninsula, the house was designed as a mobile structure to satisfy a planning condition requiring that all buildings in the area be removable. A huge shutter folds up across the exterior to reveal and shade a two-storey glazed facade, which has an open-plan living room and mezzanine bedroom behind. More shutters lift up to uncover windows on each side of the house, and a roof deck is hidden behind the parapet walls. A family of five use the hut as a holiday home and the three children sleep in a three-tiered bunk bed in the back room. Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects also recently completed a charred wooden cabin - take a look at it here. Surprisingly this isn't the first building on a sled we've featured. See all our stories about mobile architecture »
Micro-Apartments in the Big City: A Trend Builds Imagine waking in a 15-by-15-foot apartment that still manages to have everything you need. The bed collapses into the wall, and a breakfast table extends down from the back of the bed once it’s tucked away. Instead of closets, look overhead to nooks suspended from the ceiling. Company coming? Get out the stools that stack like nesting dolls in an ottoman. Micro-apartments, in some cases smaller than college dorm rooms, are cropping up in North American cities as urban planners experiment with new types of housing to accommodate growing numbers of single professionals, students, and the elderly. To foster innovation, several municipalities are waiving zoning regulations to allow construction of smaller dwellings at select sites. “In the foreseeable future, this trend will continue,” says Avi Friedman, a professor and director of the Affordable Homes Research Group at McGill University’s School of Architecture. Small living has deep roots in Japan, where land is scarce.
Prairie Rose | Tiny Green Cabins A “Sweet Life” series tiny house The Prairie Rose tiny house, micro home is built to the specifications of our “Sweet Life” tiny house series. The steel welded floor system is welded to the trailer. The wood frame work is screwed together with an expanded loft with Marvin Integrity windows for a more open feel. You can buy this plan during the 2013 Minnesota State Fair for just $39.00. Prairie Rose Dimensions Cabin Size: 8′ x 18′Road height when mounted on Trailer: 13′-5″Approximate weight: 7000 – 9000 lbsPorch: 3′ x 3′Loft Height: 3′-8″Ceiling Height: 6′-3″Reading NookExpanded Loft
The New Mini-Mall: Tiny Apartments To Open In Nation’s Oldest Shopping Center Aside from the economic whupping of 2008–2009, a major casualty of the recession was space itself. Homeowners and businesses bled square footage, leaving behind a landscape of empty McMansions, vacated big-box stores, and now-famously abandoned shopping malls. Since then, many municipalities have been grappling with how to repopulate these spaces with more nimble, post-boom uses. Existing mall mashups pretty much stick to the public realm—like Cleveland's indoor gardens and Vanderbilt's health clinics—but this spring a shuttered shopping center in downtown Providence will be reborn in micro form, with two stories of micro-apartments above ground-floor micro-retail. Add To Collection Save this image to a collection As nightmarish as a total mall existence sounds, this project offers Providence residents the best shot at living in a landmarked piece of architectural history they'll probably ever have. A model of the Arcade's new micro-units. Working with J. [via A|N Blog]
The Tiny Life: How to Build Your Home, Stay Online, and See the World for $250 a Month In 2009, Netaro, a Japanese philosophy student, built a tiny solar-powered house with his bare hands for $1,000. Then he whipped together an even tinier solar-powered mobile-house for $130. He then set about carting the little domicile around the country, dragging it behind his motorcycle at 15 miles per hour. In 2011, in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami, Netaro generated a little buzz for his resilient, anti-materialist lifestyle. Now, two years later, eyebrow-raising images of his compact moto-mobile home are again circulating round the blogosphere: Forsaking only space, Netaro lives what appears to be a fairly comfortable life. His permanent dwelling is a crude shelter Netaro built himself—he has no formal training in carpentry; he just hammered away until it was done. The above ingredients allow Netaro to go about his B-life, which is lived, refreshingly, with few discernible ideological or self-promotional undercurrents. He is, he claims, quite happy with his arrangement.