Tag Archives: build tiny

This ‘Not So Tiny’ Tiny Home in New Zealand fits an entire living space in just 7 meters

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Named the Kōtuku, this quaint tiny home is designed by Build Tiny. It is substantially larger than of Build Tiny’s other models, measuring 10 m in length. Usually, the tiny home makers’ houses measure around 7 m. However, this extra space has been utilized very well, resulting in a spacious and storage-packed interior – all cleverly placed on one level. The name of the home is quite unique and is a subtle reference to New Zealand’s Kōtuku bird. The home is towable and based on a triple-axle trailer. It features a subtle finishing of vinyl, paired with wooden accenting and a steel structural frame.

Designer: Build Tiny

The home has a width of 2.4 m, which is typical for a tiny home. It has a height of 3.2 m and is powered by a standard RV-style hookup. Double glass doors offer access into the home, where you are welcomed by a well-designed interior with balanced proportions. The interiors are finished in light hues, highlighted by poplar plywood and vinyl flooring. The result is a space that feels minimal, and soft, instantly helping you feel at ease. As you enter the living room, you come across some seating, as well as some storage space.

Located close is the kitchen, and it is quite spacious for a New Zealand tiny house. It features a fridge/freezer, microwave, sink, as well as an oven with a four-burner propane-powered stove. The kitchen also includes standard cabinetry, overhead cabinets, a pull-out pantry drawer, as well as a breakfast bar that can accommodate two people. The kitchen and bathroom are connected, and the bathroom is equipped with a composting toilet, vanity sink, shower, and washing machine.

However, the Kōtuku tiny home is only equipped with one bedroom. All the rooms have been placed on the ground floor, so it isn’t the typical loft-style bedroom you see in tiny homes. It has a proper double bed and plenty of space to stand upright. Although subtle factors, these do make quite a difference while living full-time in a tiny home. The bedroom is also blessed with loads of storage space. There is storage above, below, and on both sides of the bed. You can access the outdoors from the bedroom through glass doors. This lovely little home is delivered as a turnkey build, amped with all the furniture.

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This mobile tiny home comprised of two disused shipping containers features a spacious terrace!

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The Portable Cabin from Wiercinski Studio is a mobile tiny home comprised of two disused shipping containers.

When it comes to transforming shipping containers into homes, you get the best of both worlds. On one hand, you have yourself a homey, tiny cabin that can cozy into any small corner of the world like it’s been there all along. On the other hand, most architects accommodate a mobile lifestyle when designing shipping container homes, outfitting the piece of cargotecture with wheels and a trailer.

Adding their own shipping container turned tiny-home-on-wheels to the mix, Adam Wiercinski of Polish architecture group, Wiercinski Studio designed Portable Cabin.

Designed as a prefabricated tiny home comprised of two disused freight containers, Portable Cabin is a 55m2 mobile home and office located in Poznan, Poland. Situated above a small creek, Wiercinski Studio’s Portable Cabin was prefabricated offsite before landing in the lush gardens of Poznan’s Szelagowski Park.

There, Wiercinski designed the interior of Portable Cabin within just one day. From the outside, Portable Cabin boasts its factory-made profile, with discreet army green facades made from trapezoidal sheet metal. Trading camouflage green for bright, sun-soaked interiors, the living spaces of Portable Cabin are framed by birch plywood panels.

Brightening the home even further, two sets of floor-to-ceiling windows bookend both sides of the Portable Cabin. Cradled beneath tree canopies and besides growing ferns, a spacious exterior deck merges with one set of french doors and the main bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling window.

The exterior deck is accessible either through the living room’s french doors or the external steel staircase that’s bordered by a bowed balustrade. In addition to the living room and main bedroom, the tiny home’s residents enjoy a kitchenette, bathroom, and small workspace.

Designer: Wiercinski Studio

The post This mobile tiny home comprised of two disused shipping containers features a spacious terrace! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny home features an open-plan layout and solar system for off-grid living!

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Kingfisher is a tiny home from the New Zealand-based tiny home company, Build Tiny, that doesn’t feel so tiny on the inside, featuring room for a full kitchen, shower and bath, dining area, living room, and two-bedroom loft.

Few topics are hotter right now than off-grid, tiny living. After spending so much time in our own homes in recent years, we’re slowly waking up to the concept of downsizing. We don’t need such large-scale living spaces when we can pack all we have into 400-square-meters or less.

Offering clients the opportunity to design their own fully functional and personalized tiny homes, Build Tiny is a New Zealand-based tiny home company devoted to small-scale living. Kingfisher, one of Build Tiny’s more popular tiny home models, is a flexible and open-plan mobile tiny home that has enough space for everything from a full kitchen to a two-bedroom loft.

Measuring 8m long x 2.4w x 4.2h, Kingfisher keeps an average, approachable size. From the outside, Kingfisher sports a steel frame clad in vinyl with a cedar feature wall to the side that’s lined with vertical timber panels. The aluminum windows are double glazed to provide ultimate thermal insulation during the colder months.

The roof is only slightly pitched to provide some headspace inside for the two loft sleeping spaces, giving the tiny home a more dynamic quadrilateral shape. Placed on top of the pitched roof, Build Tiny provided Kingfisher with a solar system for off-grid power, consisting of ​​6 x Trina 270w Honey Poly Module panels.

Inside, residents can enjoy all the typical household amenities like a shower and bath, full kitchen, living space, dining area, and sleeping lofts. Walking from the stark black steel exterior into poplar core plywood-lined interior, residents are welcomed by a spacious entryway with the living room on the right and kitchen to the left.

Each room features plenty of hidden storage compartments, like bookshelves and lift-up cubbies, to optimize the tiny living space inside Kingfisher. In the bathroom, a folding shelf allows space for clothes and towels while residents use the shower. Then, under the staircase, Build Tiny incorporated concealed, slide-out cabinets that could work as kitchen pantries or additional wardrobes.

Just beyond the entryway, attached to the home’s main wall, a ladder brings residents to the tiny home’s two-bedroom loft, where one larger bed remains just a few feet away from two twin-sized beds. While the Kingfisher certainly fits the tiny home bill, with plenty of integrated storage space and a pitched roof, residents won’t feel the tininess on the inside.

Designer: Build Tiny

Throughout the home, added space-saving features take full advantage of the available living space.

An integrated ladder brings residents to the home’s two-bedroom loft.

The living space stands just to the right of the home’s spacious entryway.

Concealed, pull-out cabinets leave room for kitchen supplies and excess accessories. 

While the two bedrooms are only a few feet away from one another, they remain on opposite ends of the tiny home.

A folding cabinet provides storage space for clothes and towels while residents shower.

Solar systems and other power accessories provide the means for off-grid living.

The post This tiny home features an open-plan layout and solar system for off-grid living! first appeared on Yanko Design.

An oakwood tiny home built from locally sourced timber was designed as a love letter to Tasmania!

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The Pod, described as a “love letter to Tasmania,” is a 430sq-ft tiny home located in Tasmania, Australia comprised of two pods merged together with an overhead row of skylights.

Airbnb and tiny homes have garnered a whole lot of attention in recent years. During the pandemic, when air travel restrictions and health warnings were issued by airlines and hotels, we looked to road trips and Airbnbs to fill our wanderlust. Others took the extra time to finally build a tiny home and guarantee their hot vax summer with a destination they could escape to every weekend. Alice Hansen, a travel writer based in Australia, built her tiny home, The Pod (available on Airbnb), for others to escape to and fall in love with Tasmania.

The Pod, described by TV host Peter Madison as a “love letter to Tasmania,” is a tiny home comprised of two living ‘pods’ merged together by a narrow row of skylights. Covering only 430sq-ft, the exterior of The Pod is wrapped in Tasmanian oak wood which is replaced with expansive, floor-to-ceiling windows around the back of the tiny home.

Positioned on a hillside, the tiny home’s back pod rises on steel beams to merge with the front pod, giving the illusion that you’re “floating” above the ground, as described by Hansen. Skylights also line the ceiling of The Pod, complimenting the floating feel with enough natural sunlight to brighten the entire home and visually splitting the two pods into separate living spaces.

Inspired by a war aircraft, the structural soundness of The Pod is durable and lightweight by design with hardwood fitting out most of the exterior and interior. Upon entering the tiny home, a centerpiece fireplace greets guests, leading their eyes to the floor-to-ceiling glazed windows that offer unfettered views of Tasmania’s iconic pine trees and dunes, Frederick Henry Bay, and the Southern Ocean. Throughout the home, Hansen was sure to incorporate homages to the local area with most of the furniture and homemade goods in The Pod coming from the community’s craftspeople and artisans.

Hansen found beauty in simplicity with The Pod, describing it as inspired by her “danish heritage,” and “the simplicity of Scandinavian design.” To stay true to Scandinavian design’s elemental roots, much of the interior walls within The Pod are unstained natural wood panels.

While the exterior and the majority of the interior are wrapped in light, natural Tasmanian oakwood, the bedroom is soothed in black timber walls, giving it a touch of blackout comfort for a restful night. On starry nights, guests of Hansen’s Airbnb can escape to the deck for a warm soak in the Huon pine outdoor tub made with timber sourced from the depths of Lake Pieman.


The kitchen is small and stocked with all the essentials, from an electric stove to working space for cooking. Just beside the kitchen, a modest dining table doubles as a workbench, and overhead skylights lead guests to the living area. There, guests can enjoy a cozy reading nook and find plenty of concealed storage compartments to keep the living spaces organized and decluttered.

Designer: Alice Hansen x Never Too Small

The living room’s couch was handcrafted by a local artisan and styled in a similar fashion to the back pod with a wooden base atop steel fittings. 

The kitchen and bedroom feature darker timber wall panels to give both rooms a cozier air. 

The dark timber walls in the bedroom function similarly to blackout curtains for a restful sleep.

The only door inside the tiny home, a sliding frosted glass panel, leads to the bathroom.

Laundry facilities are found in the bathroom along with a toilet, sink, and shower.

Outside, guests can enjoy the Huon pine outdoor tub made with timber sourced from the depths of Lake Pieman.

Come dusk, the lights inside The Pod emanate a golden glow to amplify the cozy and elegant feel.

The post An oakwood tiny home built from locally sourced timber was designed as a love letter to Tasmania! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny home on wheels is solar powered net-zero solution designed by an actual architect!

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Transportable tiny homes are complex operations, to say the least. Designing them to be sustainable makes building them that much more of an intricate process. First Light Studio, a New Zealand-based architecture group built their own tiny home with help from a local company Build Tiny, Ohariu, checking all of the above boxes. Built to be net-zero through several sustainable features and compact enough to meet all NZTA regulations for mobile homes.

Ohariu was built by First Light Studio and Build Tiny from a client’s brief calling for, “a refined tramping lodge on wheels.” That’s code for hiking, for all us Americans. Since the tiny home would primarily be used for hiking trips and traveling throughout the outdoors, Ohariu was built to be adaptable and versatile above all else. Inside, the living spaces are described by the architects at First Light Studio as being, “more a large and very detailed piece of furniture than a traditional house build, the fit-out [focusing] on the things that are important and necessary.”

Catering to the necessities and casual family pastimes, the tiny home is doused in modular and multifunctional design that’s surrounded by creamy poplar plywood walls and silvery fittings that add a touch of refinement to an otherwise bare interior. Each furniture piece inside Ohariu doubles as storage to maintain an open, clutter-free interior where the tiny home’s family would bond over pastimes like cooking, playing card games, and enjoying the surrounding landscape. Featuring a chef’s kitchen, Ohariu comes with plenty of prep space for cooking and integrates tilt-up tabletops to make even more for when there’s company. Outside, Ohariu is coated in a stealthy ebony corrugate to match its lightweight mobility, supported by aluminum joinery, lights, and utilities that were given the same ebony finish. Ohariu’s roof is asymmetrical with six solar panels lined up on its longer side and a mezzanine bedroom cozying up beneath its sloped short side.

Entirely powered by the solar panels that make a grid on the roof, Ohariu is net-zero, featuring amenities like an LPG gas cylinder, LED lighting, low-water usage fittings, as well as a composting toilet. Enhancing the tiny home’s sustainable build, the materials used to construct Ohariu are recyclable for the most part and low-maintenance, durable, and locally sourced.

Designer: First Light Studio x Build Tiny

Ohariu features expansive french doors, opening up the interior to the outside environment for endless views while traveling.

Coated in ebony corrugate, Ohariu travels from one excursion to the next, never losing its stealthy personality.

With plenty of open interior space, when the french doors open up, the interior seamlessly blends with the outside.

Poplar plywood line the walls and furniture of Ohariu’s interior living spaces for bright, sunlight-drenched room.

The chef’s kitchen features plenty of integrated storage and even a tilt-up tabletop to make more room for kitchen prep.

The mezzanine bedroom is located near the roof’s pitched, shorter side.

Plenty of broad windows line the sides of Ohariu to really brighten the space.

This cozy tiny home with a family of three share their tricks to live big in tiny spaces!

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Finding out if tiny living is for you can be done in different ways. For Swiss couple, Pierre Biege and Lea Biege, finding out happened after watching a documentary on Netflix called Minimalism. After considering what’s most important in their lives, the couple went through an extreme decluttering process which led to their testing out different tiny spaces, ultimately finding their way to Holger, a tiny home with plenty of storage built by Wohnwagon perched somewhere in the Swiss Alps.

Walking inside Holger, the tiny living space is completely open to house a kitchen, sleeping and dining areas, as well as a play corner for Pierre’s and Lea’s daughter. While hidden storage areas are plenty inside Holger, the family of three live in a minimalist lifestyle by choice, so the home itself remains open and holds onto an air of spaciousness. The sleeping area keeps a big square bed that measures two meters in width and length, with the longest side jutting out an extra quarter of a meter, large enough for Pierre, Lea, and their daughter to sleep together.

Just below the family’s bed, long and voluminous pull-out drawers keep each of their wardrobes hidden from view unless pulled out. Moving to the next room over, Holger’s dining area sits below three porthole-style windows that bring in enough natural light to make the living areas feel that much more open. Positioned in the center of the dining area, a kitchen table unfolds to a full-sized dining table, accommodating up to six people. Some additional space-saving tricks can be found in the kitchen, where Lea uses a flat-pack step stool that folds and tucks back into the kitchen’s cabinets and a cutting board system called Frankfurter Brett allows the family to cook and clean with more efficiency.

While watching Netflix inside their 861-square-foot apartment, Pierre and Lea decided to declutter their living spaces and move into progressively smaller homes, going from their large city apartment to their 344-square-foot tiny home called Holger nestled in the Swiss Alps. Built by the Austrian tiny home builders Wohnwagon, Pierre, Lea, and their daughter all live together in Holger, where they’ve remained comfortable and happy in a home that’s nearly half the size of their previous apartment.

Designers: Wohnwagon x Hallo Holger

Pierre and Lea live in their tiny home somewhere in the Swiss Alps.

The home’s three porthole-style windows provide views from the dining room.

The dining area functions as more of a multipurpose room, with enough space for a play space, dining table, and working area.

The bed, which reaches 2.25-meters in length is where Pierre and Lea co-sleep with their daughter.

Beneath the bed, large and voluminous pull-out drawers store each of the family member’s wardrobes.

The kitchen features more hidden storage areas and tricks, as well as a woodfire stove for heat.

A flat-pack step stool unfurls from the bottom kitchen cabinets so Lea can reach the heights of the top kitchen cabinets.

Hidden underneath the kitchen floor, a floor door reveals additional storage compartments.

The bathroom shower is tiled with handmade mosaics.

The bathroom also features a composting toilet.

Positioned high up in the Swiss Alps, Holger’s views are unparalleled.

This cliffside cabin is supported by five suspension cables for a daunting jungle retreat!

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3D visualizer and architectural designer Thilina Liyanage conceptualizes remote, escapist hideouts and villas stationed in rugged rainforests and off the sides of jungle cliffs. Most of Liyanage’s designs stand out for their intricate interweaving of natural materials like what appears to be bamboo and wooden beams to create life-size models of wildlife and other forms of nature. His most recent architectural conceptualization takes a new approach and envisions a cabin perched above steep cliff sides, one that is entirely made from glazed glass facades and metal cladding.

Liyanage’s Cliff Cabin, as he calls it, suspends from the side of a mountain, hovering in midair. In his 3D conceptualization, Liyanage visualizes Cliff Cabin locked in place above four support beams that are bored into the cliffside to create a secure enough foundation for Cliff Cabin to rest atop. In addition to its bottom support, four high-tensile cables are attached to the cabin’s roof and balance the cabin by drawing it back away from the cliff’s edge, evenly distributing the weight of the cabin. Globular spheres lock the cables in place and add an elegant and tidy touch to the cabin as a whole.

Cliff Cabin takes on a primarily triangular shape, with right triangle glass facades sharpening the cabin’s sides and protruding out to their center of convergence. Cliff Cabin is more modern in design compared to Liyanage’s previous architectural visualizations, lending room for the exterior to mainly consist of metal cladding and glass windows. Inside, however, Liyanage’s Cliff Cabin seems to be entirely made up of natural wood elements, creating a cozy ambiance in contrast to the durable and daunting exterior. The cabin’s natural wood accents and metal overhead awnings seem to merge on the cabin’s deck, where a metal roof protects the cabin’s guests from bad weather and wooden panels line the floor below.

Designer: Thilina Liyanage

Suspended above a mountainside with support from high-tensile cables and steel beams, Cliff Cabin is as eye-catching as it is daunting.

Clif Cabin perches from the cliffside like a life-size bird’s nest.

Taking on a triangular shape, Cliff Cabin is more modern by design with glass window skylights and metal roof cladding.

Cliff Cabin’s weight is evenly distributed across the four metal beams that work as the structure’s foundation as well as the four high-tensile suspension cables.

While the exterior of Cliff Cabin is entirely constructed from glass and metal, the cabin’s interior finds warmth in natural wood elements.

This cat-friendly tiny house is a double decker, solar-powered design that keeps you happily off-grid!

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Architects construct houses according to the needs and wishes of their clients. The structural shape, the window arches, and the door frame all come into question. Sometimes that client is a cat. The designers with Build Tiny recently built and completed a tiny house in October of 2020 called Cyril House, which was warmly named after the (human) client’s grandfather who loved tiny houses. The tiny house has all the perks we’ve come to expect and enjoy inside the walls of tiny homes, but Cyril House was also built for cats.

Coming in at 8 x 2.7 m, with a steel frame and aluminum exterior, the Cyril House is a double-decker one-bedroom with a full-size kitchen, lounge area, bathroom, and home office. Resting on a double-axle trailer, this tiny home comes with a high ceiling that opens up the tiny home even further for you and your feline friend. Mounted between the office and the loft bedroom, carpeted shelves stagger between one another for your cat to traverse while you study or get work done in the home office upstairs. Across the way, you’ll find the main queen-sized bedroom with plenty of storage space and even a hollowed-out rectangular space so that you can get ready for your day without hitting your head against the ceiling. Moving down the ladder to the living area of the tiny house, the full-sized kitchen is outfitted with a built-in gas heater, dishwasher, four-burner gas stovetop, oven, full-sized refrigerator, and plenty of storage space and pantries.

Then, continuing through a cavity sliding door, into the bathroom, you’ll find plenty of floor space for your cat’s litterbox as the designers at Build Tiny designed the bathroom to optimize its overall space, so that homeowners can enjoy spacious showers and plenty of room for hygienic routines. Residents can also dry off comfortably inside the shower even on the coldest of mornings thanks to the heat-retention capabilities of the integrated shower dome. The designers also installed a Natureshead composting toilet inside the bathroom to enhance the tiny house’s overall commitment to sustainability. Just outside the bathroom, Build Tiny integrated a solar storage cupboard into one of the home’s side facades, so that excess solar energy can be stored with you instead of sending it back to the grid. In addition to the energy-efficient, integrated solar energy panels, there are plans for a future fireplace to heat the home from the living room’s corner and a gas califont provides hot water for the tiny home. You and your cat will feel right at home inside of this very big, tiny home.

Designer: Build Tiny