Tag Archives: prefabricated cabin

This tiny pentagonal cabin boasts of all the modern amenities needed to stay cozy through the holidays!

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Cabin A24 is a prefabricated tiny cabin measuring 21-square-meters that comes with all the necessary amenities to enjoy a quick respite amidst the forest’s trees and mountain valleys.

When we’re camping or traveling through forested mountains, there’s always that one cabin in the distance, perched above the valley, all by itself, in its own corner of the world. With tiny homes becoming more and more popular, that sight has become that much more familiar, but each cabin sports its own personality and unique appeal.

DDAA (Dev Desai Architects and Associates), an offshoot from a firm specializing in residential villas and interiors, designed its own line of unique cabins to capture our gaze. The RCA – 03, or Cabin A24 is a prefabricated tiny cabin that keeps a unique pentagonal shape and comes fully furnished with a bathroom, kitchenette, and living space.

Designing Cabin A24, the team behind DDAA hoped to achieve a distinct architectural identity without compromising the tiny home’s household efficiency, amenities, or spatial functionality. Cozy and petite by design, Cabin A24 forms two halves.

One half leaves enough room for a spacious living area, complete with a bedroom and lounge space. From there, the bathroom takes up about two-thirds of the cabin’s second half, which is shared with a small kitchenette, complete with a sink and small stovetop.

The cabin’s floor-to-ceiling glazed window peeks into the bedroom area, where a queen-sized bed and full wardrobe are kept. Splitting the intersection between the bedroom and the bathroom, a kitchenette foyer resides in its own corner that remains separate from the rest of the home.

Right next door to the kitchenette, residents can enjoy all the amenities of a typical bathroom, equipped with a washbasin vanity, toilet, and a shower enclosure. Just beyond the bathroom, DDAA outfitted the home with a service area that keeps, “the condenser unit and the geyser among other service equipment and conduits ensuring a self-sustained cabin unit.”

Lined with walnut wood flooring and clad with a matte finish, the interior of Cabin A24 provides a contemporary and elegant space that is just as cozy as a traditional log cabin in the woods. Envisioned in the woods, the mountains, or along the shore, DDAA outfitted Cabin A24 with a timeless personality that looks good anywhere.

Designer: DDAA (Dev Desai Architects and Associates)

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This AI-enabled tiny home gets a design upgrade making it more spacious and futuristic!

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Nestron is one of my favorite tiny home builders – they are modern, minimal, and AI-enabled! The sure in tiny homes is not a design trend but an architectural movement that is here to stay, they are more affordable, more sustainable, and more conducive to our evolving flexible lifestyles when compared to traditional houses. Nestron’s latest model is the Cube Two X which has been built upon the existing Cube Two’s functionality and aesthetics with more upgrades keeping in mind a bigger family instead of a two-person household. Take the full virtual tour here!





Cube Two XD is a prefab unit available in two models – a one-bedroom or two-bedroom configuration, and is clad with steel and fiber-reinforced plastic. Singapore-based architecture studio has designed this modern home by drawing inspiration from sci-fi and spacecraft imagery.

The company’s latest prefab builds on the aesthetics and the functionality of their Cube 2 model. “We figured it was time to give the Cube 2 line an upgrade, and thus Cube Two X was born,” Law says. Since the launch of their Cube series, Nestron received numerous requests for an even larger unit with the option for two bedrooms. The company responded to demand by creating Cube Two X, a scaled-up version of the Cube Two.

The one-bedroom and two-bedroom Cube Two X models offer 376 square feet of living space. The structure consists of a steel frame wrapped with fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) siding that can withstand extreme heat and natural disasters.”All of our products are made with high-resistance materials,” Law says. “The FRP exterior wall panels are less likely to rust or corrode, and they hold up in high temperatures, harsh environments, and extreme weather conditions, including heatwaves, hurricanes, and earthquakes.”

Built-in furniture preserves floor space in the tiny home. The designers outfitted the dining area with a built-in table for two and created a sleek built-in sofa for the living space. Optional features include electric-heated flooring, a smart mirror, a music system, and a concealed electric stove. “The invisible stove is a unique space-saving idea,” Law says. “It’s a seamless kitchen counter when you’re not cooking, but when you are, the counter transforms into a stovetop.”

Curved edges and voice-controlled tech lend a futuristic feel to the home, which is designed so that it can be shipped anywhere in the world and arrive move-in ready. “The home is fully equipped with built-in furniture that helps to maximize floor space,” Law says. “There’s no installation needed upon arrival. Much like how a washing machine works, our clients just need local contractors to wind up the power sockets and the water supply and then Cube Two X is a fully functioning home.”

For how high tech the tiny home is, it makes a relatively low impact on the environment. “Ninety percent of the materials we use are recyclable,” Law says. “The interior wood wall panels, for example, are made from non-virgin wood and recycled plastic that’s environmentally friendly and 100 percent recyclable.”

The bedroom has a large built-in wardrobe and a recessed wall niche for storage above the bed. “We make a big effort to care for the environment because we believe everything starts at home,” he says. “Living in your home should be an experience that’s environmentally friendly—and we’d like for people to be able to live a sustainable lifestyle without additional effort.” The bathroom features a smart mirror and an electric pulse toilet.

The Cube Two X is also prefabricated in a factory environment, which helps to reduce material waste. “This speeds construction time by up to 50 percent compared to on-site construction, which takes around one month,” Law says. “It’s a faster and more cost-effective process, ensuring we have no construction waste, as we use prefabricated molds to shape our products, which greatly increases accuracy.”

If the cinematic worlds of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s The Jetsons were combined to create a tiny home, it might just be Nestron’s Cube Two X – tech lovers and digital nomads are going to love this innovative home!

Designer: Nestron

This eco-friendly prefab cabin in the Italian alpines needs to be on AirBnB!

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Who wouldn’t want to pack up and move to a beautiful tiny home that sits atop a hill in Aosta Valley, Italy? The House in Chamois is made of our sustainable architecture dreams – a modern, prefabricated home by Torino-based firm Leap Factory. As with all “Leap Houses,” the home’s entire design and construction process was managed by the Leap Factory team and was constructed with a modular system built of natural, recyclable materials to allow for maximum flexibility. All of the components provided by Leap Factory for the House in Chamois were also designed and produced in Italy.

The House in Chamois was created for Barbara and Giorgio, a duo with a deep appreciation for the outdoors. Used as a base for exploring the alpine landscape, the two-story home echoes the traditional vernacular with its gabled shape but is undeniably contemporary as defined by its streamlined form, minimalist design and full-height glazing. Its position above a main road turns the house into a new landmark for the village and has become a local attraction for visiting hikers.

As a ‘Living Ecological Alpine Pod’ (LEAP), the House in Chamois was designed to be environmentally friendly. The use of prefabrication helps minimize construction waste, and the installation process was done with minimal site impact. The structure is also “hyper secure” and engineered to resist earthquakes, hurricanes and other extreme climate activities.

The modular nature of the home also makes it modifiable. As with all Leap Houses, the House in Chamois was also designed with integrated furniture and finishes. “With its minimal shapes and spaces full of light, the house shows incredible attention to details, lines and materials,” the architects explained. “The layout of the rooms, furnishings and technical systems are fully integrated to give life to spaces where one can fully express their personality and live in harmony with their surroundings.”

Designer: Leap Factory

This tiny cabin features glazed glass walls to help you escape the city and connect with nature!

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Working from home this past year has turned our houses into hybrids of the office and home– where we work is where we play is where we sleep. Many of us are finding isolated working zones, either through home renovation projects or tiny cabins devoted to work, to separate our days and keep work where it belongs. French architecture company Novablok is unveiling their take on the remote office and living space through a prefabricated tiny cabin called Mini Blok that can be positioned anywhere work calls us.

Mini Blok is a freestanding, simple cabin with a footprint of 21.6m2 that doesn’t require a permit to build or own. Without any foundation anchoring Mini Blok to the ground, the tiny cabin can be positioned in any location, from the backyard to a warehouse. With fully glazed walls, Mini Blok brings you up, close, and personal with nature. Novablok felt inspired to design their collection of tiny cabins, including Mini Blok, to create isolated spaces where working professionals and even individuals looking for a bit of a solitary respite can retreat and work or rest however they like. Tiny cabins are more popular than ever right now, for their low impact on the environment and escapist personalities. Mini Blok boasts a low carbon footprint and with such a sophisticated exterior and interior design, the workday might just end up becoming a work-cation.

The finishes and cladding of Mini Blok can be chosen from an array of different options. Constructed from natural and sustainable materials as part of Novablok’s commitment to maintaining the health of France’s forests, Mini Blok can be personalized from three different finishes. Brut is the barest option, delivering Mini Blok with only its frame and internal structuring for individuals to build and furnish the cabin however they like. The essential finish comes with interior wood paneling and built-in electrical networks but leaves the furnishing and interior design up to you. Finally, Mini Blok’s signature finish comes entirely furnished and fitted for electricity, water, and sewer systems. The exterior cladding can be chosen from Douglas fir, red cedar, or burnt wood created using the tried and true Japanese technique called Yakisugi.

Designer: Novablok

When buyers choose the signature finish for their Mini Blok, Novablok furnishes the interior and equips it with electricity and sewer systems.

Wood paneling and warm lighting gives Mini Blok an elegant feel and refined look.

Fully glazed, sliding glass doors build one facade of Mini Blok, dissolving the barrier between outdoor and indoor spaces.

Darker interior design elements are worked into the bathroom’s design through shadows and minimal paneling.

The different cladding finishes can be chosen from Douglas fir, red cedar, or Japanese burnt wood.

Clients can also reinforce the exterior of Mini Blok with composite material such as stone, concrete, and raw or painted sheet metal.

The Brut finish gives clients total freedom to design the inside and outside how they’d like.

Paneling and electricity are given to the Essential finish Mini Blok, leaving the interior design and furnishing up to you.

A signature finish comes completely prefabricated with sewer systems, electricity, and interior furnishing all taken care of.

Prefabricated tiny architectural designs that prove this trend is the future of modern architecture!

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Prefabricated architecture has been gaining a lot of popularity and momentum recently! It basically involves making buildings or building various components at a particular location, one that is better suited for construction, and then once completed, transporting it to the final site or location. Prefabricated architectural designs have a multitude of benefits – they keep costs down, ensure projects are more sustainable and efficient, and they also prioritize and pay attention to simplicity and modularity. And we have curated a collection of our favorite prefabricated designs for you – from cosy cabins to even home office pods! These prefabricated designs are a part of a growing trend in modern architecture, and could be the future of it as well!

Cabins let you get outside and at the same time be socially distant making it perfect for a post-pandemic getaway. Italian architects Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi probably also can’t wait to enjoy some downtime and therefore created the Mountain Refuge to express their desire for travel. It is a wooden, square, prefabricated cabin with an angular roof. While the geometric cabin is a structural contrast to its natural setting, it still blends in well while showing off its modern design. “The project acts as a contemporary interpretation of old traditional mountain refuges, bringing in architectural character and spatial quality,” say the designers. The wooden cabin comes in different modules and each has the capability to be flexible and expandable. It is made to be compact and optimizes the space while taking up the least in nature.

Designed by Nestron,  Cube Two is a 263-square-foot home that is designed for the future and smart living. This modern compact home is a prefabricated structure that already comes fitted with the latest home appliances that can all be controlled by an AI assistant named Canny. The exterior has smooth curved corners that give it a friendly vibe and the interior offers enough space for a family of four to live comfortably with two bedrooms and an open living area. To make it feel roomier, there is a skylight that runs across the ceiling and floods the space with natural light, and also provides a wonderful frame of the night sky.

Prefabricated cabins such as GROVE CAB, designed by Valerii Shcherbak, help make nature getaways feel a lot cozier and all the more accommodating. This new type of architecture is garnering a lot of popularity in Europe and it’s no surprise. Prefabricated cabins are constructed prioritizing simplicity and modularity. Being that Shcherbak’s cabin is built from wood material and sturdy paneling, each component of GROVE CAB is designed for familiar and intuitive construction, and the light, natural wooden tones help open up each room. The cabin comes in two modules: the first containing a living room or recreation area and your bedroom, and the second comes with a kitchen, bathroom, and exterior patio. The two units are connected where the frames for both of the module’s hallways meet, which creates a space that feels like a one-bedroom home.

 Woonpioniers, an Amsterdam-based architecture, and design studio has created Indigo, a modular building system that designs homes to replicate one of your dreams. Depending on the home you’d like to build with Woonpioniers, Indigo’s structure and shape may vary. Recently, Lia Harmsen collaborated with Woonpioniers to design her prefabricated live-in workspace for sculpting. The finished custom two-floor home measures 861-square-feet and features fixed-end moment building practices that produce a beautiful, curved interior leading from the wall to the ceiling. The fixed-end moment frame of the home offers an open-air floor plan, giving complete access for the building’s interior layout to take shape, leaving behind the spatial restriction of support beams and partitions.

Named the Kvivik Igloo, the tiny, prefabricated houses perch the hilltops of Kvivik, overlooking the bay and surrounding mountains. Designed to look like tiny hobbit cottages, each Kvivik Igloo is built with a hexagonal frame and design elements meant to echo the past. Lined with asphalt panels, the Kvivik Igloos can sprout grass and greenery from their roofs and sides to really transport residents into their favorite hobbit fairytale. The igloo’s living roof not only adds to its charm but also to the tiny home’s sustainability factor, creating a heightened nesting place for birds and woodland creatures alike. Underlining their sustainability efforts, the builders use passive house construction practices and natural materials to build the Kvivik Igloos, including wood, glass, aluminum, and rubber.

Studio Puisto, an interior design studio based in Finland, collaborated with furniture brand Made By Choice and design firm Portos Demos to create Space of Mind, a modular, micro cabin prefabricated to be stationed anywhere so that guests can go from their home office to an off-grid mountain studio for peace and productivity. The modular cabin can be stationed anywhere accessible by helicopter or crane and designed as either a peaceful working studio, dynamic fitness hub, or a cozy, hotel-style bedroom. Studio Puisto, turning their micro cabin design into a micro-hospitality solution, even has plans in the works for creating an app for bookings and keyless entry and constructing another micro cabin outfitted with a sauna.

The Majamaja Wuorio, built by Pekka Littow of Littow Architectes, is described as an eco-cabin for its use of green energy storage and a closed-circuit wastewater treatment system. Pekka Littow’s Majamaja concept was born from life on Finland’s archipelago and essentially speaks to a building tradition that prioritizes harmony between humans and nature. Majamaja Wuorio units are prefabricated, transportable, and by making use of off-grid technologies such as solar panels and a recirculating water treatment system, the units can be situated anywhere. The tiny cabin’s closed-loop water treatment system collects both rainwater and air humidity in order to store it, then sends it to the integrated water purification system for residents to use in the shower, kitchen, or bathroom.

This pod is called ‘My Room in the Garden’ because that is exactly what it is and we don’t want to leave any space for confusion as we are all trying to minimize our per-my-last-emails. The pod’s external structure is crafted from weatherproof aluminum and the interior has been designed using birch. To alleviate that claustrophobic feeling there are floor-to-ceiling windows that let plenty of natural light flood in. As previously mentioned, you are the boss and therefore this pod is fully customizable to fit in your existing space. Since it is a modular prefabricated system, you can build your pod in a way that optimizes your backyard or your driveaway without having to move anything around.

Modern-Shed, a leader in innovative, sustainable, prefabricated structures, heard our 11:11 wishes and designed Dwelling on Wheels, or DW for short. Their Dwelling on Wheels is a 220-square-feet tiny home on wheels that buyers can bring with them on the road and situate on coastlines or nearby riverbeds for overnight stays and views. Built to withstand varying climates and temperatures, a steel rib cage and standing seam metal siding wraps around the exterior of DW for a durable and weather-tight finish. Complementing the industrial cottage design, red cedar wood accents warm up the walls, eaves, and even the tiny home’s awning that hangs overhead a durable, ironwood deck, accessible through the dwelling’s double-pane glazed gable door.

Putting an absolutely new kind of spin on “Home Delivery”, Brette Haus’ prefabricated cabins are literally shipped to your location on the back of a trailer. In a matter of 3 hours, the home is placed on the site, unfolded, and secured in place, turning it from one weird wooden carton into a liveable cabin with anywhere between 22 to 47 sq. ft. of space (depending on the cabin’s variant). Each cabin takes roughly 8 weeks to fabricate and comes made entirely from carbon-neutral, weather-proof, and sustainable cross-laminated timber. There is no need for a permanent foundation… the cabins can easily be unfolded on any leveled ground before being secured in place using screw piles. The hinges on the cabin can survive up to 100 folding cycles.

This prefabricated tiny home is shaped like a geometric igloo for a sustainable off-grid living!

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One look at the rugged terrain of the Faroe Islands and you’re instantly transported to the latest fantasy television show where moss coats the roofs of handbuilt cottages and clicking hooves replace the sound of car engines. Danish engineer, Ole Vanggaard and Faroese architect, Kári Thomsen worked together to build their own cluster of prefabricated cottages in Kvivik, a hamlet cozied up in the hills of the Faroese landscape.

Named the Kvivik Igloo, the tiny, prefabricated houses perch the hilltops of Kvivik, overlooking the bay and surrounding mountains. Designed to look like tiny hobbit cottages, each Kvivik Igloo is built with a hexagonal frame and design elements meant to echo the past. Lined with asphalt panels, the Kvivik Igloos can sprout grass and greenery from their roofs and sides to really transport residents into their favorite hobbit fairytale. The igloo’s living roof not only adds to its charm but also to the tiny home’s sustainability factor, creating a heightened nesting place for birds and woodland creatures alike. Underlining their sustainability efforts, the builders use passive house construction practices and natural materials to build the Kvivik Igloos, including wood, glass, aluminum, and rubber. Chimneys also punctuate the top of each igloo’s roof, suggestive of a wood stove or fireplace. Steel framed windows form grids on the exterior of Kvivik Igloos, sweeping the entire span of some facades and merging the brisk outdoors with the cottages’ cozy insides.

Known for their strength and staying power, igloos have operated as a form of dome sheltering during winter months for many Inuit and Eskimo people for as long as they’ve existed. The angled structure of the Kvivik Igloo makes it so that the interior walls, floor, and ceiling converge, producing inclined skylights and a tall interior height. The cloudy white sunlight in Kvivik filters through the igloo’s handmade glass windows and skylights and gives the interior an antique air.

Designers: Ole Vanggaard and Kári Thomsen

Located in the Faroe Islands, Kvivik Igloos are built with hexagonal frames and plywood exterior panels.

The angled windows of Kvivik Igloos produce inclined skylights and allow sunlight to filter through the handmade glass surface.

A concrete foundation provides a sturdy base for the Kvivik Igloo to rest atop.

Colorful steel frames border the windows and give Kvivik Igloos a whimsical air.

All windows, doors, and window frames are handmade offsite and measure to fit the igloo’s preferred size.

A grass roof coats the tops of Kvivik Igloos, echoing the builders’ commitment to sustainability and nature.

This sustainable tiny home creates one modern multifunctional living space to reduce its carbon footprint and cost!

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Nowadays, most of us are thinking tiny, especially when it comes to living spaces. Tiny homes and prefabricated cabins have spread across the globe like wildfire and for good reason. Many of us are still eager to travel and can do that with a tiny home hitched to the back of a truck, then some of us prefer tiny homes for their cost-effectiveness, and the rest of us hope to reduce our personal carbon footprints by taking up less space. Johannesburg-based architect Clara da Cruz Almeida designed her prefabricated tiny home, Pod-Idladla with the idea of creating a tiny living space for young graduates without the means for a downpayment.

Before the manufacturing process, Pod-Idladla was conceived by Clara for young professionals to have a sustainable, affordable, and multifunctional living space. Inside, the living areas form one fluid space, rather than individual rooms. Walking through the unit’s front door, vertical storage solutions line the unit’s veneered walls and universal brackets allow the plywood storage bins to be moved around the pod. Even the pieces of furniture, from the kitchen table to the living room sofa, have dual purposes to optimize the unit’s space allowing residents to customize the space however they like. To merge practicality with convenience, the shower is even located in the passageway, which is outfitted with duck boarding, or slatted wooden flooring to keep the timber from getting wet.

Speaking on the unit’s multifunctionality, Clara says her tiny home contains, “spaces, not rooms. You could use the task room to store clothes or to keep your sports equipment. You could have an upstairs study if you don’t want to sleep on the mezzanine.”

Coming up with Pod-Idladla, Clara created a prefabricated modular home that could either stand by itself or attach to additional modules. Measuring a mere seventeen square meters, Pod-Idladla was built to fit into most backyards or small outdoor areas. The frame of Pod-Idladla takes the shape of an upright trapezoid to easily cozy up against any wall or attach to additional units. Each tiny home is built from standard drywall materials, including steel, aluminum, and wood. Outside, the home is clad in timber that can last up to 100 years with the proper care and maintenance. To save on transportation costs, the prefabricated components of Pod-Idladla are constructed in a Johannesburg-based factory and assembled on site.

Designers: POD-iDLADLA

Inside, the unit feels more like one multifunctional space, containing the functionality of the kitchen just below the mezzanine bedroom.

Small enough to fit into most backyards, POD-iDLADLA measures 20.52 square meters including the outdoor deck.

A ladder brings residents from the ground level to the mezzanine that can keep the bed or be morphed into an upstairs office.

The kitchen and dining area merge into one with the help of multifunctional furniture, like the expandable kitchen table.

Vertical storage solutions punctuate the unit’s veneered walls throughout.

Plywood boxes make up the unit’s storage spaces and can be moved throughout the unit.

Clara chose Dokter and Misses to design the interior for their industrial, yet quirky design schemes.

Even the unit’s light fixtures can be moved from their sockets and placed elsewhere in the home.

This mobile cabin comes with it’s own cargo drone delivery service that saves the local environment from destruction!

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Nowadays, I can’t even keep track of how often I think about traveling. Following the onset of stay-at-home orders, the travel bug seems to have surged in numbers and we’re all daydreaming about getting away from it all. If only we could tie up hundreds of balloons to our roofs so could finally stop talking about travel and just do it. Well, now you can – sort of. Studio SFSO, a San Francisco-based industrial design duo, noticed the increased urge to travel as well as social media’s role in promoting tourism and conceptualized a new travel experience that transports mobile cabins to uncharted territories with help from delivery cargo drones.

Known for their often bulbous and quirky home designs, Studio SFSO now turns to travel for inspiration. Studio SFSO’s mobile cabin delivery service aims to help mitigate the unfortunate byproducts of overtourism like land degradation and wasteful construction activities. In addition to these preexisting problems, the COVID-19 pandemic has moved many people to either ditch previous travel plans or embrace unsafe modes of travel. In order to offer their own solution to these problems, Studio SFSO’s mobile cabin delivery service incorporates the use of drone technology to first transport prefabricated holiday cabins to unique, faraway places and then, once that travel itch has been scratched, send the mobile cabins back to the user’s home in their respective city. This mode of travel from Studio SFSO promotes nonintrusive tourism that protects the environment and won’t disrupt the local community’s way of life.

To get the whole holiday started, users will decide on a single location from a map made available by the delivery service’s accompanying app and reserve that location as the chosen delivery address for the drone to deliver the prefabricated cabin. After the location is selected, just like how city e-bikes can be returned to any available charging station, the guest’s cabin is picked up from the chosen destination’s closest ‘droneport’ and delivered to the onsite location. All the drone takes care of is the delivery service, so guests will have to unfold and assemble their cabins before enjoying their stay. Once the holidays come to an end, travelers simply fold up their prefabricated cabins and a drone takes care of the rest, bringing it right back to a nearby droneport.

Constructed from a combination of both plastic and wood, the cabins are cuboid boxes that measure 2.2 meters in length, 1.5 meters in width, and 2.2 meters in height. To help reduce overall waste, each cabin collects leftover food and garbage in tanks that leave no trace of tourism behind. Further reducing the problem of waste brought on by tourism, Studio SFSO’s mobile cabin delivery service also delivers pre-cooked meals to guests in a similar fashion to airline dining services. Once the cabin reaches the chosen destination, additional furniture, blankets, and portable toilets are subsequently delivered. To provide heating, electricity, and water, each cabin is also outfitted with the necessary equipment to provide comfortable stays for safe modern travel.

Designer: Studio SFSO

This sustainable cabin glows like a candle & was built using cross-laminated timber!

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It is my first day back at work after a long weekend that I spent cabin hunting to alleviate my urge to travel. I found this sustainable wooden one called Kynttilä by Ortraum Architects which is Finnish for ‘candle’ – makes sense because it instantly gave me the warm cozy cabin vibes! Kynttilä’s linear shape with its triangular roof is pretty much like a geometric candle adaption in itself.

The cabin is built on Lake Saimaa and is right on the border of lush woods and endless serene water. The prefabricated cabin only takes one day to be assembled. Helsinki-based architecture firm constructed Kynttilä from cross-laminated timber (CLT) with the exteriors featuring larch board cladding. CLT is a wonderfully eco-friendly construction material that offers high strength and structural simplicity for cost-effective buildings. It has a much lighter environmental footprint than concrete or steel. CLT is also quicker to install, reduces construction waste on-site, improves thermal performance, with light handling duties making it better for health and safety, and is versatile enough to be molded according to different designs.

Kynttilä has a 15-square-meter floor space which is optimized for a short stay. It includes built-in furniture like the bed that is fitted on one glazed end and a ladder that leads up to a bunk bed above the door. The sweeping glass windows add openness to the small space and give a cooling visual contrast to the otherwise warm wooden aesthetic. Eaves overhang at both ends of the cabin to provide a sheltered, raised platform for sitting on or storage while also protecting the woodpile kept beneath.

“The space is strongly linked to nature, as the large window creates direct and intimate contact and communication with the surroundings. In the night time, like a candle, Kynttilä shines as a warm light on the lakeshore,” said Ortraum Architects. When you turn on the lamp at dusk, the cabin truly does glow like a candle in the untouched forest and that is why the team planned the most low-impact construction process they could to preserve the stillness of the environment. It is exactly the kind of off-the-grid spot we could all use to recuperate from 2020.

Designer: Ortraum Architects

This entirely self-contained + portable prefabricated cabin uses green energy storage system to be an eco-cabin!

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The tiny home movement of today has garnered a lot of attention for many reasons, but most seem to form out of the environmental benefits that come with living in a tiny home. It’s true that downsizing to a tiny home will in turn downsize your own carbon footprint, but some tiny homes take it another step further. The Majamaja Wuorio, built by Pekka Littow of Littow Architectes, is described as an ‘eco-cabin’ for its use of green energy storage and a closed-circuit wastewater treatment system.

Pekka Littow’s Majamaja concept was born from life on Finland’s archipelago and essentially speaks to a building tradition that prioritizes harmony between humans and nature. Majamaja Wuorio units are prefabricated, transportable, and by making use of off-grid technologies such as solar panels and a recirculating water treatment system, the units can be situated anywhere. The tiny cabin’s closed-loop water treatment system collects both rainwater and air humidity in order to store it, then send it to the integrated water purification system for residents to use in the shower, kitchen, or bathroom. Waste from dry toilets is also composted and reused as fertilizer. The water purification system is powered by solar panels and a fuel cell, which also provides green energy storage for additional household appliances such as stovetops, air conditioners, and light fixtures. The Majamaja Wuorio Eco-Cabin stands as a pilot design cabin and part of a larger off-grid village currently in development. Beginning in 2021, Littow Architectes has plans to open Majamaja eco-cabins up to short term rental periods, so that guests can experience the simple joys that come with living simply in a tiny home on the coast of Finland’s southern capital, Helsinki. Since Littow’s tiny homes are transportable, potential environmental damage during pre-construction periods is entirely avoided. Opting instead for easy assembly and disassembly, Majamaja as a concept commits to “sustainable spatial planning projects with light infrastructure,” as described by Littow.

In constructing self-contained, tiny homes for Finland’s coast, Littow aimed to build Majamaja Wuorio as an example for future housing solutions. Each unit is built from prefabricated wood elements without the need for heavy-duty tools or too much elbow grease. Each unit’s lightweight infrastructure and easy assembly give way to installation possibilities in even the most remotes areas – all that’s needed is a helicopter, or dingy to hop between islands on the archipelago.

Designer: Littow Architectes