by Reinoud
Below you find the official tekst we made for the Dutch Design Week which is held from October 18th – 26th. The fact that we participate in the Dutch Design Week is coincidence because our tiny house is located in the area were the exhibition is held.
We started this project for many different reasons. The main one is that we are all in the ‘building business’ and that business is slow at the moment. I work as a freelance cad specialist and designer, Peer (who also happens to be my neighbor) is an Architect and works as an project adviser and travel agent. We are all self employed. Therefore, we have the time to start something like this.
Another reason is that the area were the tiny house will be located is a development area. It used to be a large factory complex owned by Philips. Now, it is going to be a living area. We thought it would be nice to have a place over here. We also always dreamed of having an vacation cottage but never knew where. Whether it should be near the sea, near the forest, or in some interesting city. Far away or close by.
Then maybe the best part of the project for me is that we get a chance to actually build something with our own hands instead of always working on a computer. We can learn a lot from the building process. Also a tiny house is a chance to rethink the way we are living what do you really need.
Before we started I sent an email to tumbleweed asking if they also deliver tiny house to the Netherlands. The answer was that they did not because the highway regulations were different in Europe and their focus was on the USA. They wished us success if we wanted to make one of our own. For the design, I looked for something traditional in wood in the Netherlands. Building in wood is very unusual over here. Only in de ‘zaanstreek’ the area just above Amsterdam. I think the reason was because there was plenty wood which was imported from the Scandinavian countries to build the ships in the 17th century. Therefore, I named the tiny house waterland-huisje because Waterland is the name of the area that has a lot of these buildings. I found Waterland a good name because of the environmental impact (or lack of impact) of tiny living. Waterland is an area that lies below the sea level (you can look for Broek in Waterland on google maps).
Visit their website here.
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Watch a movie of the house here:
