Tesla revealed today that it created what it calls the ‘Tesla Tiny House’ to feature its energy products, like solar panels and Powerwall.
The company is bringing the house on tour using a Model X “to educate the public on how to generate, store and use renewable energy for their home.”
The tiny house contains a Tesla mobile design studio and configurator to help home owners configure a solar plus energy storage system for their home.
— electrek.co
Needless to add that the Tesla Tiny House itself gains all its electricity via a solar installation on the tiny roof. The exhibition tour is limited to four major Australian cities for now, but the economic gain could be far from tiny — as the world's leader in capita penetration of rooftop... View full entry
The Danish term “Skaeve Huse” roughly translates to special houses for special people. Since the early aughts, the government has been using this form of temporary housing to help shelter individuals who suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and/or have trouble adapting to normal living... View full entry
The tiny house is just one example of the lengths to which people will go to create a sense of home even when they lack the means for it. It’s just one symptom of a much wider and intensifying search for belonging, which makes home as important to politics as the idea of class or rights – especially now, when so many people feel displaced, both literally and figuratively, by life in innovation-driven, high-tech, networked capitalism. — Aeon
Related stories in the Archinect news:Humans and other things that nestHow Tadao Ando defines his own "home for the spirit"The downsides of the charming "holdout" houses View full entry
There is something romantic about the idea of a holdout, a David to the big developer's Goliath, a protagonist for whom home matters more than money, a solitary survivor. In the Pixar movie "Up," the holdout is the hero. In the real-life Seattle version of the story that reportedly inspired the film's premise, an elderly woman who refused to sell her home became — along with her home itself — a city icon. — washingtonpost.com
In practice, though, modern cities grow out of older ones in large part through the unglamorous process of parcel assembly — of fitting together the once-smaller pieces of the city, "Tetris"-like. And while the result often produces fantastically bizarre neighbors, cities can't... View full entry
The Onion has once again skewered an architectural trend, this time honing in on the 'pro's and con's' of tiny houses, aka 'micro-houses'. Pro's include: "paints inability to afford a real home as positive life choice"; "allows you to live the simple life your ancestors did everything in their... View full entry
When I talk about small spaces, I’m not talking about photogenic shelters constructed from found materials by Silicon Valley billionaires. I am not talking about cabin porn. I am talking about the universal human instinct to burrow, regardless of your personal dimensions. — NYT
Molly Young penned a Letter of Recommendation: for Tiny Spaces. She opens by noting that many of the homes she grew up in, shared a commonality - "smallness".On a related note, earlier this year Orhan Ayyüce pointed out The Tiny House Fantasy. View full entry
It’s not enough to just give someone a shelter. A home really needs a certain amount of consideration as to how you live in it. As we look at housing as a solution for helping the homeless and middle class -- especially in L.A. -- we have an opportunity to expand the vocabulary. We’ve never been tied down with what housing looks like in Los Angeles. We can have super interesting approaches to density here. — Mimi Zeiger – latimes.com
More from the world of tiny homes:The Tiny House FantasyWoman's dream tiny home clashes with Canadian lawThe problem with tiny homes - they can get stolenSwedish architects design for un-permited small-space livingPrototyping: Tiny House Design Workshop View full entry
Tiny homes aren’t a solution. Small living is another superficial fix, brandishing clever design and appeals to nostalgia while ignoring the underlying social relations which cause homelessness, housing insecurity, and environmental degradation. — JACOBIN
Arielle Milkman pens an article for JACOBIN. The article takes a historical account of tiny homes and gives a current critique to everyone's darling (everyone = young, white, nonprofit or government worker.) At the end, "Tiny Houses" are superficial housing solutions for the poor. "As spaces... View full entry
Cheryl Smith planned to move "off the grid" and into a small house near Clark's Harbour, N.S., a year ago.
But thanks to Canadian building regulations, the four-by-six metre structure remains half-built and empty. [...]
Canadian laws require living spaces to have access to power to run smoke detectors and air exchange systems.
But Smith said the point of moving into her tiny home was to disconnect from the power grid.
— ctvnews.ca
More from the tiny home world:Seattle high schoolers push to provide moveable, minimalist shelters for the homelessThe problem with tiny homes - they can get stolenSwedish architects design for un-permited small-space livingThe Tiny House Lover's Guide to RomanceTeenager builds tiny home to avoid... View full entry
After past run-ins with the city, the nomadic Nickelsville has shifted from temporary place to temporary place. Most recently, the group struggled with a location, after Seattle decided to authorize and regulate three homeless encampments in the city.
“There’s a need for a transportable, insulated, tiny house that provides privacy and isn’t going to be a huge burden for them when they move,”
— nextcity.org
A couple who spent $35,000 building a tiny house-on-wheels to live an eco-friendly life were stunned to find their home-to-be had been towed away by thieves.
Casey Friday and his wife Jessica spent two and a half years building the house themselves from the raw materials so they could reduce their environmental impact.
The 650sqft home... could run on rainwater, compost its waste and get by on 'very little' electricity - but was purloined from its custom-paved driveway in Spring Branch, Texas.
— dailymail.co.uk
Battling a national housing shortage, Sweden’s housing ministry is gambling that throwing away the red tape will encourage homeowners to build that extra room and alleviate the pressure. In July 2014, the Scandinavian kingdom amended its Planning and Building Act to allow homeowners to build small structures that complement their homes without obtaining a building permit, provided they are no bigger than 25 square meters (269.1 sq. feet), and no higher than four meters (13.1 ft). — qz.com
Zack Giffin is [...] a host of a new series, “Tiny House Nation,” beginning Wednesday on FYI, an A & E Networks channel that used to be known as Bio. When we caught up with him by phone last week, he was on the road for the show, which chronicles those who live the tiny-house life. The chalet, he said, was sitting on a trailer “in a lovely field in Lummi Island, Washington State, on my parents’ property, which is where it lives when we are not around.” — nytimes.com
Previously:The Tiny House Lover's Guide to RomancePrototyping: Tiny House Design Workshop View full entry
Imagine what [living in a tiny house] might mean when it's time to bring a date back to your place for the first time. Or even worse, moving in together. Will you remain devoted to your extra-small space when you decide to get a dog? Have kids? And so on. [...]
Turns out, dating and cohabitating and raising a family in 120 to 400 square-foot spaces can be done. It just comes with a unique set of challenges and best-practices at each milestone.
— citylab.com
“I never thought of this as a ‘house,'” Storey said. “It was designed to be a ‘container' of daily life. It made me realize there is work and there is life, but more often these are inseparable.” — latimesblogs.latimes.com
