Here’s another example of a tiny house that is built imaginatively and attractively. It comes from Japan, a place where space is at a premium, but has a long history of beautiful architecture. We found this house while perusing Design Milk; you can check out the rest of the Mizuishi Architect Atelier-designed house here. It may be only 312 square feet, but it houses three people comfortably. We’ll let the pictures do the talking…
Images courtesy of Design Milk
If you do any work at home, you know how important it is to have a space dedicated to work. You don’t want to be distracted by household noises in the living room right as you on an important conference call. Sometimes though, there’s just no room in your house and an addition can be expensive. Luckily, Archipods has the solution!
Via Charles and Hudson, we found these innovative home offices. They go in your yard, so there’s no need to tack an extra room on to your house. Their exterior is cedar shingles, so they’ll fit into most types of gardens. The interior is a cool, modern look.
If you’re looking for a unique place to work at home, Archipods just might be the ticket!
Ice Castles Grown by a Minnesota Man Using Geothermal Heating System
Inhabitat
“Winters in Minnesota are cold and the best way to get through the bone-chilling season is to have fun with it, just like Roger Hanson does. For the last four years the ice builder has been growing ice castles in his front yard with the help of his geothermal heating system, some fancy sprayers and a computer program he created himself.”
The $200 Microhouse
New York Times
“For ingenuity, thrift and charm, Mr. Diedricksen’s tiny structures are hard to beat. Made of scavenged materials, they cost on average less than $200 to build. They often have transparent roofing, which allows a fine view of the treetops, particularly in the smallest ones, where the most comfortable position is supine. They have loads of imaginative and decorative details: a porthole-like window salvaged from a front-loading washing machine, a flip-down metal counter taken from the same deceased washer.”
How Many Recycled Cans Does It Take to Make an Airplane?
The Daily Green
“The good news is that my yearly office cleaning gives me a chance to sort out the hundreds of press releases and news clippings I’ve saved during the year for my annual Top Ten Shocking Eco-Facts blog post. Remember, being the Green Cheapskate, that’s “eco” as in ecological as well as economical.”
DIY Home Humidifiers: Humidify Your Home for Less
DIY Life
“The cold winter weather outside, coupled by indoor heating systems, easily sucks all the moisture out of your home. Low humidity levels can also lead to a host of problems including dry skin, sore throats, along with cracks in paint and wood furniture. Adding a humidifier is an easy way to replace this lost moisture in your home, but at times humidifiers can require high maintenance and more space and money than you would like to expend. Luckily, even on the tightest of budgets, there are inexpensive tricks to humidify your home.”
Recession Buster: DIY Wall Art
Calfinder
“There are some great things you can do in a weekend to revolutionize your living room—and installing affordable wall art is one of them. Check out how.”
diy project: homemade leprechaun spirits
Design*Sponge
“Saint Patrick’s Day is right around the corner; it will sneak up on you before you know it, so you might want to prepare! The tradition of drinking on the holiday comes from a legend called Patrick Pot. This project honors that tradition.”
Would you ever choose to live in a broom closet? MSN Real Estate has a story about someone who did — a college student, not wanting a roommate, creatively looked for some extra space around his dorm. Voila! A room with a broom.
We might all not want to live in a closet (although some do), but living in a small space can be rewarding. More applicable to a general audience, though, are these tips from MSN Real Estate on how to live with less clutter and maximize your useful space. Check out the article to read more!
What’s the smallest place you’ve ever lived in? Did you like it? What are your tips?
Image courtesy of nicolas.boullosa on Flickr
Small kitchens: we’ve covered them before because it is fascinating to see how all the kitchen essentials can be fit into a space that is compact, efficient, and dare we say, beautiful. Dig Digs rounded up some small kitchens that we think anyone would be glad to cook in. Let’s take a look at a few…
How luxurious is this tiny kitchen? Gleaming stainless steel appliances and everything a cook needs are featured in Kitchen Studio by Fendi Casa.
Come together by Albrecht Seeger and Martin Klinke is a fun kitchen/dining room all in one.
And Grandma’s Revenge is a complete multi-use cooking and eating space. Just open and close to get different looks!
Check out more at DigDigs!
In honor of our last post of 2010, we’ve decided to round up our most popular posts ever. Below are the top 10. Enjoy and we will see you next year for more great home living information! Thanks for reading this year.
Looking for a small place? A really, really, REALLY small place? Well then, you might want to consider this Italian getaway. For the low price of $68,000, this 55 square foot location can be all yours. You’ll get a tiny bathroom and a bed in a sleeping loft. They even manage to fit in a window!
OK, so it’s not terribly practical, but the location is amazing. The world’s smallest apartment is on the Piazza di Sant’ Ignazio and is right behind the Prime Minister’s residence. Who knows, it might be just the thing for a Roman holiday or sleeping the night away after living la dolce vita. Besides, think of the bragging rights that come with owning the word’s smallest apartment!
Image courtesy of The Telegraph.
At 1600 square feet it is a modest project, but this Santa Rosa, Calif., house caught the judges’ attention, however, and they labeled the MD Residence Best in Show for the 2010 Architect’s Challenge.
The judges said:
This home is a crisp contemporary glass pavilion. Just as the home floats above its California hillside site, the bowed roof form floats above the open and spacious interiors, surrounding the residents with the drama and beauty of the gorgeous setting. The arcing transom windows allow the floor to ceiling fenestration to visually ‘set in’ to the exposed wood ceiling. The resulting pavilion character is the product of the seamless relationship between indoors and out.
Proof that the best things don’t always come in large packages! The MD Residence was designed by Kent Chilcott of Kent Chilcott Studio. Marvin products in the house include clad patio doors, casements, awnings and custom curved-head fixed windows.
We’ve covered smaller living spaces before, but it’s worth another look.
By now we’re over a year into the current recession. Despite some green shoots of recovery, the future is far from certain. Combine that with a new interest in sustainability, and the footprints of new homes have been shrinking.
Inhabitat’s recent post on small house living features some interesting statistics, such as that home square footage has been steadily decreasing since 2007 and that census statistics indicate that newly constructed homes now have less bedrooms.
Obviously people are heeding the call of the recession and living in less space. However, that does not necessarily mean less money is being spent. As designers like Sarah Susanka have pointed out, quality over quantity can be very valuable when building or remodeling a home. For those that are building less house and putting on smaller additions for the sake of money though, the question is if this new-found aesthetic will last when better times are here.
Or we may continue to see smaller houses as people continue to want to live in certain areas. There’s only so much land, as Japanese builders have known for a long time. We featured this narrow house in a post a while back, but it’s getting some attention from NPR. Who knows? These ultra-small, super-innovative homes might become the wave of the future here!
What do you think of small houses? A necessity or a virtue? Or both?
Wow…that’s all we have to say about this. A 2.4 cubic feet kitchen. Yes, you read that right: 2.4 cubic feet. For a kitchen.
It’s the Superconductor from Avanti and it contains a fridge, sink, two electric burners and two drawers. It even has a nice backsplash. In one tiny bit of space, you can store perishables and other food, cook on a stovetop and even wash dishes. Add in a microwave and a toaster oven, and you could have a complete kitchen that could go in a corner of your house.
The Superconductor could work for a variety of situations: dorm rooms, apartments with roommates, offices, even regular homes that need a little more kitchen power. What an amazing product! Do you think that you could get used to cooking and using such a compact kitchen?
