Podpads
What might look like a small toy village is actually a set of tiny houses used for camping and protection during music festivals in the United Kingdom. Podpads are designed to be a fun, comfortable and secure solution to the less attractive aspects of camping. They are rented out at various festivals for around 350 GBP or $550 a week and can be purchased as a guest house or child’s playhouse.
Designed and developed for Glastonbury Festival 2005, the podpad will stand up to the most severe of weather conditions. They are comfortable, weatherproof, cool, soundproof, secure, and safe with optional extras available to increase comfort. They are also a possible solution to a group base camp, on-site storage, as well as live-in accommodation.
The podpad is designed to accommodate two adults comfortably on either a double or twin beds. In exceptional circumstances, they can accommodate a family of three. The podpad is 8 feet by 6 feet with a wooden floor and a fitted carpet. They have raised beds with mattresses, shelving, windows with curtains, a mirror, light and a 12V socket. Podpads are also solar powered by a panel outfitted as a sunflower on the roof. This can be used for low usage items such as charging cell phones, laptops and iPods. Continue Reading »
The Mexican Casita
Using a word dating back from the 1860′s, the casita might just be the original tiny house. The Spanish diminutive of casa or house is used to describe a small Latino style home, usually sharing space with other homes its size. My husband and I spent a portion of the holidays in Baja, Mexico, and stayed in a casita near the marine sanctuary of Cabo Pulmo. Each of these tiny houses are part of a small village that is completely off the grid. The villagers’ power comes from solar panels, generators and propane.
These types of Baja casitas are typically made out of cement blocks and are coated with a few layers of cement, which is rounded over the corners of the blocks. Other casitas in Mexico are made of adobe brick and coated with layers of mud and straw. The cement blocks help to keep out the desert heat and block El Norte, or the heavy winter winds that come from the north. Continue Reading »
Small Living Journal – Community
In this issue of the Small Living Journal we interweave the two concepts of living smaller and living in communities because they are fundamentally linked: the smaller your home, the more you take advantage of the community around you.
We can’t help but be reminded of our collective past, one that is wonderfully devoid of clutter, high energy bills, spending lots of time alone in our cars and staring at glowing boxes for 8 hours a day. Is there a way to piece together a new, community-minded existence while living small?
Read the Small Living Journal Issue 6 – Community.
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Wyers End
If you love Ross Chapin’s cottage designs as much as I do, you’ll be happy to know that another pocket community is now open in the White Salmon/Hood River area of northern Oregon. The community is being developed by Smart Development and built by Skyward Construction. The landscape architect is Andrea Flint.
Wyers End is a small community of 18 cottages situated in a grove of mature oak trees with views of Mt. Hood and the Columbia River. The land parcel that the community is situated on used to be a high crime area until Chapin and Smart Development took over. They proposed to the city that the existing streets be narrowed to reduce the impervious surface area and avoid overheating of the microclimate.
Each of the cottages will have a private garden and will share the green spaces and the community building. They will also be situated to take advantage of the amount of natural light that comes in through the numerous windows. The cottages average about 1,100 square feet and include custom built-ins and cabinetry and low-VOC paints. The landscaping will be built for low water use. Parking will be on the community periphery.
“There is a market in tight times for well-designed, thoughtfully-built, smaller homes in a community setting,” Chapin said in Builder Magazine. “Baby Boomers, especially, are looking ahead and reconsidering their options. Most don’t want to end up isolated in a sheetrock castle.”
Photos courtesy of Ross Chapin Architects and Smart Development
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A Living Home
Some days, don’t you feel the world crumbling around you? Financial crises, world hunger, war, poverty. It seems unending. Some people may feel that one way to escape is to have a small, comfortable place to come home to. A home that is like a hug, warm and alive.
Some people have found that feeling in a cob house. A hand sculpted structure that curves and comforts like the earth it is made from. The House Alive! company is offering workshops for 2009 on how to create your own small structure.
House Alive!, which was started in 2001 by Coenraad Rogmans, James Thomson and numerous volunteers, teaches workshops about natural building, natural design and appropriate technology. They also offer consulting services, do presentations and seminars and work to promote natural building as a real alternative to conventional construction methods.
Cob is a building material that is made of a mixture of sand, straw and clay. The materials are mixed wet, by foot or with a tractor or mortar mixer. The word “Cob” comes from an old English word meaning “Lump” or “Loaf.”
The wet cob mixture is used to build thick earth walls; the building technique is very similar to sculpting with modeling clay. Because cob building requires no forms, you can build your walls into any shape you choose. Curves, niches, arched windows and built-in furniture are common features in cob buildings.
Because cob can be labor intensive, it is best if a cob structure be kept on the small side.
House Alive! will be offering a workshop in May of 2009 on how to build a complete shelter. Participants of the workshop will leave confident that they can design and build their own natural home. The building techniques will include:
- Making cob by foot
- Rubble trench foundations
- Stem walls out of recycled concrete, earth bags, and stone
- Natural sub-floors for earthen floors
- The materials sand, straw, and clay: How they work, what to look for, where to find them
- Wall building: tapering, keeping it plumb, trimming, shaping
- Electricity: How to put in wires, how to build a circuit
- Plumbing: Water and gray water systems
- Windows, doors and hanging cabinets and other things on cob walls
- Hybrid buildings: The interfaces of cob with other materials
- Earthen floors
- Earthen finish plasters
Lectures and demonstrations will include
- The economy of building
- Passive solar design
- Natural design
- Composting toilets
- Solar hot water
- Solar electricity
- Codes, hybrid buildings and natural renovations
- Straw bale construction
- Light straw clay, adobe brick and waddle and daub.
- Roofs and roof insulation
- Simple living and community
One thing that cob building lends itself to is cohousing. Cohousing communities attempt to be as self-sufficient as possible, by building their own homes from sustainable materials like cob and straw bales and by growing their own food. The Emerald Earth Sanctuary in Mendocino County, Calif. makes decisions by consensus, and they value direct, open communication and conflict resolution. They also offer work parties, natural building workshops, and a work trade program.
If you are interested in learning more about cohousing, the 2009 cohousing conference will be in Seattle, June 24-28, 2009.
Emerald Earth Sanctuary
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Ross Chapin and Tiny House Communities
A few years ago I was given the chance to visit the Third Street Cottages on Whidbey Island and the opening of the Greenwood Avenue Cottages in Seattle. These communities, by renowned architect Ross Chapin and developer Jim Soules, have become famous for being small, sustainable and community oriented. Chapin calls them pocket neighborhoods.
I think my first exposure to small and tiny houses was Chapin’s Third Street Cottages, which were featured in Sarah Susanka’s book, Creating the Not So Big House. They were so well designed and so space efficient and sufficient that it has not occurred to me since that I would need anything bigger. The Third Street Cottages are about 600-650 square feet and have a great room with living, cooking and dining areas, a downstairs bathroom with laundry facilities and a downstairs bedroom. Each house also has a full size loft that is accessed by a ship’s ladder. The owners personalize each cottage by naming their homes. I visited a cottage in the Third Street community named Plum Corner for the plum trees that were left behind during construction.
Third Street Cottages. Photo by Christina Nellemann.
Third Street Cottages. Photo by Christina Nellemann.
The typical cottage community by Chapin includes 8 cottages on a 2/3 acre plot that usually holds one or two larger homes. The cottages surround a “green” area that holds seating, grass and trees and a place to grow community vegetables. A parking lot is off to the side of each community, hidden from view by a fence or bushes. Each cottage has its own small garden area surrounded by a low fence and each community has a shared tool shed and meeting room. Each small house is sold as a condominium and a monthly fee helps to maintain the garden and outlying areas.
To create a balance between the public and private areas, Chapin uses the concept of “layering”. The entryway into the main garden is the first layer, moving from public to more private. Anyone who does not belong in this area is noticed right away from each of the cottages. This way, neighbors can keep an eye on each other’s homes. The layering concept continues with the main garden area leading into the more private cottage gardens through the small fences and then each house is entered by first going up several stairs to the open front porches. The porches bring to mind the charming bungalows of the Arts & Crafts movement of the early 1900’s. The porches extend the living area of the small homes as well as offering a convenient area for neighborly chats.
Greenwood Avenue Cottages. Photo from Ross Chapin.com
I was able to view the Greenwood Avenue cottages during an open house tour and I was impressed by how the little details in the homes gave them each a different personality. Each tiny home uses architectural tricks to create a larger space: built-in bookshelves, alcoves, delineated ceiling heights between living and eating areas, ample windows and skylights. Each home is personalized with special details such as trim, woodwork (the walls of the Third Street Cottages are paneled in reclaimed spruce saved from destruction by a piano company) and cubby areas holding shelves, window seats or dining nooks.
Greenwood Avenue Cottages. Photo by Christina Nellemann.
Greenwood Avenue Cottages. Photo by Christina Nellemann.
Greenwood Avenue Cottages. Photo by Christina Nellemann.
Chapin believes in not only designing and building to save space and money, but to promote sustainability. The low garden fences are recycled fencing, the cottage’s siding is cement fiber board rather than wood, and the garden pathways were laid with crushed hazelnut shells from a local nut company.
Ross Chapin Architects also sell cottage home and small home plans. The three smallest are the Blue Sky Cabin at 307 square ft. the Backyard Cottage at 449 square ft. and the Lizzie Cottage at 540 square ft.
Blue Sky Cabin. Photo from Ross Chapin.com.
Backyard Cottage. Photo from Ross Chapin.com.
Backyard Cottage Interior. Photo from Ross Chapin.com.
Living small — Some Utahns discovering the charm of cottages
Cottage Housing in Your Community (PDF)
A guide to drafting a cottage housing ordinance
Tiny House Village Concept post on Tiny House Design
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