Archinect - News

Startup "Getaway" rents out tiny modern houses in the woods for urbanites to escape

2017-12-29T14:13:00-05:00

The savvy emphasis on escape and disconnectedness and repose has resonated among the millennials Getaway aims to reach. In each of its markets, outside New York, Boston and Washington, Getaway’s houses are booked solid on weekends, and in early 2017, the company, founded by two Harvard graduates, raised $15 million in venture capital funding, which suggests that a tiny house campground may soon be coming to a forest near you.

Getaway positions its retreats just outside major cities where individuals are encouraged to recharge and reconnect in nature. Tapping into the tiny house phenomena that rapidly gained popularity among millennials after the 2008 housing crisis, Getaway houses can be rented at just over $160 a night. The vacation rentals provide pamphlets and literature urging guests to remove themselves from stressors such as work, email, texts, and competition. A wooden box is provided to lock away your phone with no wifi available in the area (for those unable to confine their phone to the box).

Fallingwater Institute gains 4 spartan yet beautiful dwellings by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

2017-02-09T18:46:00-05:00

The Fallingwater Institute, which is located on the High Meadow farm next to the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright home, is adding four new "modest wood portals" to its 1960s era teaching facilities. The new dwellings, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, are created both to extend from the existing High Meadow structure while giving the Institute's summer residency students a spare, yet beautiful place, to work and live.

"The building's main entry welcomes visitors into a central screened porch, which joins the new architecture to an existing cabin and serves as the outdoor gathering and dining space," Bill James, project architect from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's Pittsburgh office, notes in a press release. "A horizontal screen, made of Norway Spruce harvested and milled on site, extends from the main cabin and continues along the walkway leading to the dwellings."

A cottage from a midcentury-modern fairy tale

2016-12-26T14:01:00-05:00

It takes a certain audacity to move to rural-nowhere and erect a house from found materials, to grow your own food and carve, kiln or create whatever else you need. And the house itself, in its porous approach to its natural surroundings, exhibits a typically Californian philosophy of design.

Back in November Amanda Fortini profiled The Blunk House. Designed/built by the late multidisciplinary artist-craftsman J.B. Blunk in Marin County, the cabin is a holistic expression of an artistic life.

Cabin design results for CFI’s International Sustainable Architecture Competition, New Brunswick

2014-03-14T15:15:00-04:00

If designing cabins is your thing, maybe you can find ideas from the Community Forest International's International Sustainable Architecture Competition in New Brunswick, Canada...The submissions presented new approaches to cabin design, but the jury decided "The Whaelghinbran Nomadic Cabin", by recent master's graduate Nathan Fisher from Toronto, was most suitable to be built at CFI's developing Rural Innovation Campus.

1st Prize – The Whaelghinbran Nomadic Cabin. Designer: Nathan Fisher, B.Arch Sci, M.Arch (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

1st Runner Up – Acadian Abstraction. Designer: Belle Stone, BA, M.Arch (New York, NY, USA)

Judge’s Award for Architectural Poetry – Hearth. Designers: Kyle Schumann, B.Arch & Katie MacDonald, B.Arch (Los Angeles, California, USA)

People’s Choice Award – Marlice. Designers: Alice Dupin, M.C.E, M.Arch and Marion Filliatre, M.C.E, M.Arch (Paris, France)

Find out more on Bustler.

Second House First exhibition currently at the RAW Gallery, Winnipeg

2013-10-15T14:17:00-04:00

Check out the "Second House First" exhibition, currently at the RAW Gallery of Architecture and Design in Winnipeg, Canada until Oct. 27, 2013. Second House First gives an in-depth look into the cottages and cabins that surround Lake Manitoba in Manitoba, Canada. The exhibition explores and questions the growing differences between the cabin and the suburban house as well as the contrasting lifestyles of its residents.

Contributors include Conrad Koslowsky (Roz Barr Architects); Frederik Bo Bojesen, (Herzog & de Meuron); Scrap Marshall, (UCLA AUD); Yannick Guillen, (YG), and Lisa Stinner-Kun (University Of Manitoba).

Cabins by Olson Kundig Architects

2011-11-26T13:16:31-05:00

Seattle's Olson Kundig Architects has carved a niche for itself designing contemporary cabins that are cozy when occupied and secure when vacant. Here's a collection of their creations, starting with Delta Shelter, built in Mazama, Wash., in 2005.