Replies

1. 
   jimblodgett | Jul 06, 2008 12:41am | #1

   Cool. 

    

1. 
   Mooney | Jul 06, 2008 01:04am | #2

   Very cool.

   I guess you plumb it like a mobile home and seal to bottom of the flooring.

   Tim

     

2. 
   Scrapr | Jul 06, 2008 04:10am | #3

   http://www.housesofthefuture.com.au/hof_houses04.html

   not quite this small (yet)

1. 
   reinvent | Jul 06, 2008 04:16am | #4

   Whoever lives in one of those houses would probably ride one of these:http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/01/transportation-tuesday-the-cardboard-bike/#more-12161

3. 
   Matt | Jul 06, 2008 04:53am | #5

   Was talking to an architect the other day.  He was saying that sometime in the future maybe the American dream wouldn't include owning a single family home... I said not in my lifetime.... I guess in Europe most people live in apartments or condos?  Hard for me to imagine.  At this point in time I feel like I've earned what space (and separation) I have.  Trying to talk DW into a smaller crib, but I've only been working on her for 2 yrs....

1. 
   Jer | Jul 06, 2008 05:19am | #6

   It's a frame of mind. I don't want to right now, but I wouldn't mind going back to an apt. depends on location is all.

1. 
   Matt | Jul 06, 2008 05:24am | #7

   I hear ya....  Mind talking to DW?

2. 
   talkingdog | Jul 06, 2008 06:48am | #10

   >sometime in the future maybe the American dream wouldn't include owning a single family homeIt is reasonable to presume that higher housing density will be required in a world where energy prices are perhaps much higher than at present. Higher density is the best way to attain efficiency.Most of that density will be multi-occupancy housing, condos, etc. But I think there will be strong resistance to 100% high rise development.So the status properties, the "fine homebuilding," will be urban infill housing on much smaller lots than at present. Multi-story townhouses with elevators, roof gardens, etc., typically built out of red iron, reinforced concrete, or engineered wood frame. Parking underneath on first floor for one small vehicle and bicycles, scooters, etc. Basements may go down two levels and developers will be aiming to achieve FAR of 200 or greater in order to make the maximum use of very expensive land.Now, with respect to the modular units in this presentation, which are very fashionable with architects these days, these designs will not work on very small urban infill lots. The reason why so many of them are pictured in empty fields is that there is no way zoning would allow them in built areas.

   In urban infill, lots get smaller and are shaped irregularly, with lots of weird constraints involving the built environment, setbacks, sightlines, zoning, etc. A high degree of customization is required, rather than standardization as with these modules.I believe that there will have to be some serious zoning changes in order for this to happen.

1. 
   brownbagg | Jul 06, 2008 07:08am | #11

   I think I could be happy with a 20x20

1. 
   splintergroupie | Jul 06, 2008 07:33am | #12

   Meals-on-wheels, tie-dye style. Full-time residence of one of my artfair buddies.

   
1. 
   brucet9 | Jul 06, 2008 08:25am | #14

   That gal looks about as happy with her home on wheels as those homesteader wives pictured in front of their prairie sod houses in the 1870's.BruceT

2. 
   splintergroupie | Jul 06, 2008 09:05am | #16

   She was making little drawstring handbags on a hand-crank sewing machine inside there. She made a living, i guess, but mostly she was getting by on her inheritance from her folks dying at the same time. I guess that might make a person moody. Last i heard, she'd upped her game with the bags, using fancy beads and materials, and they'd become a 'thing' at boutiques. She was doing quite well aiming higher. Cool truck...had a shower, tambour doors over the cabinet fronts, pull-out curly-maple table, Jotul woodstove, PV electrics, a queen-size bed over the cab and 17 stained-glass windows. She had power-steering added to the Ford F-250 so she could still use it in her old age. <G>

3. 
   jjwalters | Jul 06, 2008 02:48pm | #18

   this is my guest house 12x16 living/kitchen combined with a sleeping loft/sm wood burner cook stove/sm fridge.........has water...needs an outhouse yet and is totally liveable. (outhouse will be disguised as a tool shed to fake out the revenooers)You really don't need a large footprint, but you do need lots of windows in a small place.........I've lived on boats, in the back of pickups, tents but the strangest place for me is my daughters 12,000 sq' hollywood style mansion.........I love the camper BTW.

   
4. 
   jimblodgett | Jul 06, 2008 06:43pm | #21

   Nice.  Sweet. 

5. 
   splintergroupie | Jul 06, 2008 07:45pm | #23

   I could spend some time there, in the trees...nice. It looks like you have some sort of trellis around the big treee...?

6. 
   jjwalters | Jul 06, 2008 08:09pm | #25

   sort of trellis........you mean the poison ivy? :-).............I killed the root though, but it WAS a biggy.You must, if you care to rent, share your space with my pet 6'+- black snake though.........

7. 
   splintergroupie | Jul 07, 2008 08:08pm | #27

   I'm good with snakes, though i prefer non-poisonous. We had one poor critter when we were in CA, our cat Alcatraz, who got hit 3 tmes in the head by rattlers. He lived through each one, though the first required an emergence vet visit. He seemed to get more tolerant of the poison each time...or his head was just that much harder!

8. 
   brucet9 | Jul 06, 2008 08:06pm | #24

   I looked again at the pic. The victorian style iron braces for the cantilevered over-cab section is also a nice touch.BruceT

3. 
   susiekitchen | Jul 07, 2008 11:26pm | #28

   I guess in Europe most people live in apartments or condos?

   Never been myself, but friends who have lived there say that the majority of people live close to work and amenities and live in apartments or very small houses.

   You should see someone's face when I tell them that it's not unusual for a couple in Europe to receive a kitchen as a wedding gift or that people often take their cabinets with them when they move. Suddenly it makes sense that European cabinets have adjustable legs, magnetic toe kicks and metal hanging rails.

1. 
   brownbagg | Jul 08, 2008 01:38am | #30

   they think of cabinets as furniture

1. 
   susiekitchen | Jul 08, 2008 06:19pm | #34

   You're absolutely right.

   Years ago I had a catalog from a European furniture company. Put it next to the cabinet catalog and you could hardly tell them apart.

2. 
   brucet9 | Jul 08, 2008 05:30am | #31

   "...people often take their cabinets with them when they move."Make that always take their cabinets. You rent a house or apartment totally bare and install your own cabinets and appliances. That's why European cabinets are modular.Also, refrigerators are generally small, sort of mini-bar sized, and people are used to shopping daily or every other day at the neighborhood store, bakery, butcher shop, etc.It was quite an adjustment for us when we lived for a year in a village in Germany back in '93.BruceT

   Edited 7/7/2008 10:32 pm by brucet9

4. 
   Tyr | Jul 06, 2008 05:46am | #8

   http://www.galfromdownunder.com/dan-price/

   This is small, underground, has sort of a garage...well....I guess you will just have to look. Tyr

   
   

   ---

   Edited 7/5/2008 10:47 pm by Tyr

5. 
   rez | Jul 06, 2008 06:19am | #9

   ya, modular.

    

   View Image

    

6. 
   blownonfuel | Jul 06, 2008 07:35am | #13

   Although most things are big in Texas, these are not.

   http://www.tinytexashouses.com/

1. 
   intrepidcat | Jul 06, 2008 08:38am | #15

   I don't know about those houses but that place in Gonzales is way over priced on everything I saw there.

    "Never pick a fight with an old man. If he can't beat you he will just kill you." Steinbeck 

1. 
   blownonfuel | Jul 06, 2008 05:48pm | #19

   I saw the owner on this old house once. He is a member of some kind of door knob collectors association. He gave the owners of the house Norm and the guys were renovating and good deal for solid wood antique doors.
   It was probably for the show.

2. 
   reinvent | Jul 06, 2008 02:48pm | #17

   But aren't those the out houses?

1. 
   blownonfuel | Jul 06, 2008 05:51pm | #20

   That's a good one. I still see some standing in my neck of the woods. I think and hope that they have been retired.

1. 
   brownbagg | Jul 06, 2008 07:33pm | #22

   make a great deer stand

1. 
   blownonfuel | Jul 07, 2008 12:48am | #26

   Yeah it would.

7. 
   susiekitchen | Jul 07, 2008 11:35pm | #29

   Interesting, and some are quite lovely, but potentially wasteful?? Although I applaud any trend toward housing of a reasonable size, this seems to be "statement" housing...a McMansion mentality in reverse.

   Smaller housing is going to have to support the average American person or family. I can't see many people outside urban dwellers being comfortable in 300 square feet.

   BTW, here in Huntsville, you can see an actual turn-of-the-century "Katrina" cottage at the Depot Museum.

1. 
   jjwalters | Jul 08, 2008 02:03pm | #32

   I can't see many people outside urban dwellers being comfortable in 300 square feet.(quote)It's just a mind set......you change it from inside to outside like you do when you live on a boat......When people get more outside oriented little Johnnie goes outside to play games with his friends instead of to his room for six hours of video games.I see nothing but good coming from all this cause most of what we've done since the fifties in the US has been to withdrawal from the streets, giving them up to the degenerates and hidden in our sprawling houses.

1. 
   jjwalters | Jul 08, 2008 02:10pm | #33

   THE TRIBEEleven o’clock on a summer morning and the place was seemingly deserted, no dogs, nothing. Where’s everybody at? Where’s the kids? I thought as I slowly drove past one house after another in the upscale housing development.I gazed upon one perfectly manicured lawn after another, each bisected by ribbons of clean concrete drives and sidewalks. There probably wasn't a dandelion in the whole damn allotment.The carefully designed scene, instead of evoking envy, made me feel a little sad, especially for the chubby kids huddled around their TV’s and computers breathing stale, conditioned air. Kids who’ve never heard of kick the can, or knew the pleasure of playing hide and seek outside after dark. Kids who’ve never danced in the warm summer rain. or got into a good fist fight. To me, this atmosphere was cold, sterile, and alien.Day after day, aside from the occasional guy who still mowed his own lawn, or his wife coming and going in her new S.U.V., I rarely saw anyone. The only noise in the neighborhood was the sound of construction around the new over-priced home we were building.
    
   I thought about my own childhood days growing up in the housing project and realized how lucky I’d been. There, in the summer, small dandelion-cluttered yards would be full of bare foot kids playing games in the grass. On the blacktop sidewalks they’d be riding bikes, or skipping ropes while their mothers huddled together on the front porch stoops gabbing amongst themselves.I remembered the laughter, crying, barking dogs, smells of food cooking, back yards full of clothes hanging on lines while drying in the hot sun. We were a tribe of poor, noisy, blue collar common folk, but we were alive, and we had fun. No music blared from boom boxes, no guns, gangs, or drugs. That would all come later, after corporate greed, TV, and welfare had taken their toll on the working class and stripped us of our pride. ***I’ve created a stereotype here, but I did it on purpose to prove a point. The point being; that as we’ve sought to better ourselves by improving our social position, we have also lost the need for each other.We’ve broken away from the tribe and have decided to go it alone. We have perverted the herding instinct by choosing to live in close proximity to, yet totally separate from, our neighbors. These modern developments are a shining example of our separation. We surround ourselves with every modern convenience we can afford, close the doors to our large, self contained homes and spend our days locked within our mini-castles.Instead of a moat and drawbridge, we have a security system. Instead of Knights in shining armor to protect us, we have a uniformed police force waiting close by to apprehend any neighbors foolish enough to break the thin red line. Have we created a modern version of Camelot and are regressing back to the Middle Ages?I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting old, but I sure do miss my friends and those lovely, sunny bright medicinal flowers that have become a curse, as have their neighbors, of so many. END

1. 
   susiekitchen | Jul 08, 2008 07:06pm | #36

   Brought back memories of my childhood, also.

   Even after we moved to the dreaded suburbs, most of our neighbors retained the blue collar knock-and-come-in approach to each other from our former lives. In the summer we kids were usually outside running through sprinklers, playing handball or badminton, or laying around in loungers on the lawn with a book.

   In the evening my Dad would take his accordion and beer to the front steps. He'd start to play and pretty soon we'd have neighbors coming over with chips and dip, extra beer, etc. and their own folding lawn chairs. People would dance, sometimes sing, the kids would run around, and we'd have a good old time until way past dark.

   While they were out enjoying themselves no one locked the doors and set the alarm. Heck, the most valuable thing people owned other than their house was the car sitting in the driveway. We didn't have gun or jewelry safes, or wine cellars full of expensive vintage. We also didn't have the easy amenities of the city so we improvised our own entertainment. Parties happened at the drop of a hat (or beer).

   Over the years I've noticed that there's no spontaneity and very little connection to others in our lives. We schedule everything in our busy, over-burdened lives. We shuttle our kids to every conceivable type of activity, sometimes I think because we're convinced that they'll have no other interaction if we don't. It takes weeks to schedule lunch with a friend.

   On the other hand, we've made gross spectacles out of some social get togethers that used to be simple celebrations. Weddings must cost at least half a year's income to be worthy of having so that everyone can be suitably impressed. Birthdays have to be held at the local hot spot or no one will come. Pool parties are held at the public pool outside the community clubhouse, despite the fact that everyone has a pool of their own. God forbid a guest should track water onto the Brazilian cherry floors.

   You're right - we've gained a lot, but lost so much more.

2. 
   rez | Jul 08, 2008 07:06pm | #37

   hey jj, good stuff. 

2. 
   susiekitchen | Jul 08, 2008 06:35pm | #35

   It's just a mind set.

   I agree somewhat, but the amount of space one requires to feel comfortable at home or in public is both personal and cultural and ever-changing, I think. The types and sizes of housing we choose are influenced by our own personalities and experiences, and what's going on with current culture, changes in lifestyle, economics, etc.

   However, these preferences can indeed become entrenched and become a mind-set until something in the culture causes a change or attitude.

   I see nothing but good coming from all this cause most of what we've done since the fifties in the US has been to withdrawal from the streets,

   Here I agree almost completely. Once we start living in our own little suburban paradises, I think we become disconnected from others and from life outside our own houses. Any drive thru the typical subdivision leaves me with a feeling that none of those living there ever go outside except to manicure the lawn.