The Home Blog

Small Homes

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm really drawn to the idea of really tiny homes. If you knew me, you would know the absolute impossibility of me or my family ever living as sparsely as would be required for this type of lifestyle. We're Disney collectors and you can't be a collector of anything and live in a 12x10 foot space. It just won't work.

With small homes, there's so much importance placed on Design because everything has to have a particular place or you won't be able to fit the necessities of life in the space. Modern technology means you can still have some of life's luxuries. But you're definitely giving up choice. The best homes are those with settings where the outdoors like your house and the home is more like a bedroom, kitchen area.

The New York Times takes a look at a few of the available Small Home designs and the people who choose to live in them. What do you think? Could you ever live small?

See also: Modern Cabana,

Printing a House? Someday soon!

Someday soon we'll be printing our homes from giant fabricators. Some assembly required, apparently.

Contour Crafting, has created a layered fabrication technology that squirts materials like concrete, and thereby automates the construction of structures like a single home. It can even embed channels for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning in each house.

Actually, this is pretty cool. Think of a home made of materials that knows when to let sun in or keep it out based on heating or cooling needs. Even the basic technology might make Prefab housing much more affordable.

The Greening of Florida

It's on a slow pace, but it's happening. The State of Florida is slowly movign to deal with some of the issues that comes with population growth and limited water and land resources. The Orlando Sentinel writes about some of the current troubles with building green

She said her first difficulty was finding an architect familiar with green standards. She couldn't locate the right one in Florida and ended up hiring one from Atlanta. The next obstacle was locating materials. She found some locally but ended up paying shipping costs for many delivered from the West Coast.

Hopefully as the trend to green grows, those problems will vanish. In fact, if anyone wanted to come up with a green modular house system that was also hurricane cat-4 rated, I'm sure they'd have more business than they could handle. Just keep the costs down around $150 sq ft installed if possible.

An anti-pre-fab house for less than $57/sq ft

Looking to buy a modular or pre-fab house and shocked at the price per square foot, usually around $200-$250? Would you be interested to know that you can still build houses for less than $60 a square foot? Well Urs Peter Flueckiger has something to show you in Texas.

Flueckiger has built a house using Corrugated Steel and other industrial materials.

to prove that it was possible to create an affordable, durable house that was beautiful and interesting to live in. He began envisioning his design as an alternative to modernist prefabs, many of which sell for about $250 a square foot. Mr. Flueckiger knew he could design a family home for considerably less, without compromising the design.

As it turns out a lot of compromises were made along the way, but they did it and saved a significant sum. Now they have a beautiful functional living space that rivals anything you can get for $250 a square foot.

[ Tags: home, homes, design, pre-fab, modernist, modernism, industrial+design, living, home+living, home+building ]

Pad Life

Why is it that the European Union gets all the cool modular housing. This Pad modular housing system looks amazing, is very flexible, and easily expandable as your family grows.

I wonder if it's hurricane wind rated. Probably not with all those windows.

[Technorati Tags: home, homeblog, modular, manufactured+home, living, housing, pad, padlife, design, architecture].

Futuro House on BoingBoing

For the ultimate in home kitsch be sure to visit the Futuro House a fiberglass and polyester dream home.

OMD: Office of Mobile Design

In my continual hunt for an affordable manufactured house that can withstand the hurricane force winds that we 'might' get in Central Florida I found this amazing website. They've recently announced the launch of a prefab substainable living house. Looks great for guest houses, school rooms, etc.

Sure, it's not hurricane proof but who wouldn't want to buy from someone who has their own t-shirts for sale and who builds prefab houses with dataports for the iPod built right in (warning large PDF file).

Euro Prefab!

Manufactured homes seem to be making a comeback in the realm of the Euro. This story talks about the German market warming up to new designs for 'off the rack' homes including some by famous architects such as Matteo Thun and Frank Gehry.

I'm waiting for someone to take this to the next level and design and sell prefab communities. Design habitable, workable, playful mini-cities. Each two to three blocks long with Two to three story buildings. Shops on ground one, homes and offices above. Small towns and cities could drop a couple of these into locations they want to improve economic foundations and living density. Connect them via mass transit and you have a pre-defined loop of growth.

S P A C E B O X - Modular Living

The Spacebox is a self-contained studio housing unit from The Netherlands. Perfect for downtown apartment living, college dorms, or even a motel style inn (are you listening Disney?). Made with the same composites that you find in ships and airplanes, these units are built to last and built to endure transport and relocation. You could pack up your little motel of rooms on a train and ship it anywhere its needed. Could these be coming soon to a town near you? Who knows?

[ ttags: home, house, modular, spacebox, ecofriendly, dorms ]