The Bauhaus Barn
Craig has been busy exploring a design idea using Google SketchUp. You can see all te drawings on this blog for this 20′ by 20′ modified A-frame cabin.
Pavilion by Baumhauer
This small pavilion was designed by the Berlin-based architectural firm, Baumhauer. It’s located in the mountains in southern Germany. While it’s not a home, I was really impressed by the simple geometric design and some of the unusual features, like the mirrors and deck roof. It seems like there are a lot of nice traits in this tiny structure that could inspire some owner-built small homes. Read more about this Pavilion by Baumhauer at Dezeen.
Photos by Julien Lanoo
Foam Dome Homes as a Roof
Craig has polished up his design concept of putting a foam dome roof on top of a shipping container structure. This hybrid structure would really maximize the strengths of both building techniques.
Home in a Box
Imagine being able to place a single box filled with the essentials (bed, bath, kitchen) inside a larger open space making an inhabitable space habitable. This is an interesting design concept that packs all the function of a home into one big box.
Rain Water Harvesting Shed Concept
Over the past week or so I’ve been exploring the idea of buying a virtually unbuildable lot in one of the most notorious real estate schemes in the west, California Pines. I even setup a separate blog to record my findings at californiapines.blogspot.com, as well as a Facebook page to try and connect with others interested in the place.
One of the main issues up there is that the 15,000 1-acre lots are virtually worthless for development. This is due mostly to the remote location and the cost to put in a well and septic system. By the time you laid the ground work for a small cabin you’d have spent more than some houses in the area.
But since I like a conceptual challenge I started noodling over what it might take to build on unbuildable land, assuming one could get approval for an alternative, yet truly sustainable, approach to water collection and waste disposal.
I’m not rushing to buy land up there, but I am using the thought to generate some interesting ideas. This first design exploration is an alternative to drilling a well by building a simple rain water collection system that would be later augmented by a future cabin’s roof.
Underground Concrete Addition
While this project is an addition to a much larger home, it seemed like a good one to share since it could stand-alone as a separate small underground home. Building underground always seemed like a great idea to me, even though it presents many unique challenges.
Rock and Rollit
Several readers passed this onto me; it seems to be a very captivating idea. When I first spotted it I expected to see a HAL 9000 computer watching over the inhabitants because it’s so similar to basic structure of the living quarters of the spaceship Discovery in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But no, this is a design project from students at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. It’s a clever concept for getting more function from a small space, albeit a bit impractical for more than one occupant… and flush toilets. 
Electrolux Micro Laundry Concept
Electrolux suspects that more people will be living in smaller space in the future and have developed some design concepts for laundry appliances in anticipation of increasing demand. One of my readers tipped me off to this… thanks Michael!
Dream and Fly Bubbles
This is a little design concept for little shelters that are intended to be placed at airports, and other transit centers, to provide a quite place to stay for travelers. I can really understand the value of designs like this after seeing what a volcano eruption can do to travel across a place like Europe.
Bug Out Box… BOB
This small house concept has an interesting survivalist spin. It’s a simple hybrid shipping container home that is part container and part octagonal central unit. It’s flexible and can be expanded to meet the needs of multiple residents or kept small.
