Micro-housing

A newish trend hitting Seattle is micro-housing, dense developments of small, affordable apartments, built on a small footprint. This news story approaches the issue from a zoning controversy perspective. This article also focuses their story on some controversy but shows a cool picture of the interior and describes it with some detail. In November of 2012, San Francisco apparently just approved reducing the minimum legal limit for living space from 220 sq ft to 150 sq ft, a move that will allow micro-housing. The article also show examples of floor plans. Another article, this from the Seattle Times, shows an overhead picture of a 200 square foot unit. 300 square foot floor plan here.

Weehouse has style and $99k price tag. And, who doesn’t love a tree house? How about an $8,000 gypsy wagon? Here’s another very cool example from Sage. And a site that focuses on tiny houses. Of course, the modern equivalent of a gypsy wagon are towable trailers, like the r-pod.

Here’s a site with a bunch of kit homes with prices ranging from $35k to $80k (without interior walls and plumbing, etc.) — built green and from recycled materials but no info on energy efficiency. Check out this shipping container, micro-home, set on wheels and ready to travel with you. Reminds me of a modern day gypsy wagon (see this post for beautiful pictures of creative alternative homes and other structures). This site has floor plans. Wondering about insulation, but check out this video which shows several examples of different pre-fab possibilities that you can design yourself:

And, another shipping container house, but for about $50,000.

But for a passiv-haus, leed certified, Wisconsin-ready house, check out this post on the Newenhouse.

A 2011 article on nano houses and a book on many designs < 650 sq feet.

A “pop-up“, passive solar house.

This is a cool blog post with lots of pictures about tiny houses, some on wheels. It includes this video tour of a tiny house (posted below):

SMS Eco-village outside of Ashville, NC. Vision is debt-free community of tiny homes.

Here’s a video showing the construction over 10 months of a tiny house on wheels:

Wheaton laboratory’s Love Shack discussion and some inspiring pictures.