(breadcrumbs are unavailable)
May 30 2009
Quick note: I’ve just been told this video only plays for viewers in the U.S. If someone knows of an alternative source that’s friendly to other locations, please let me know and I’ll gladly swap it out.
In the spirit of my media-free week, this Saturday’s video is a short one. Besides, I couldn’t resist sharing.
Summer is here, gang. Step away from the computer and go enjoy!
May 29 2009
Each Friday Coming Unmoored runs a weekly roundup of tiny homes featured on the web and recent news stories that may be of interest to small home enthusiasts.
(Not bad for someone on a media fast, right? 
)
Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!
Tiny Houses Featured in the Past Week:
Recent News Stories and Essays on Tiny Homes and the Small Home Movement:
New Small Home Websites and Blogs to Check Out:
May 29 2009
German pre-fabricated homes company, Hanse Haus, is now distributing a Rotor House. The Rotor House incorporates a bit of a carousel theme- and is certainly doing its part to make tiny houses fun.
This is an innovative tiny house that fits into a space of just approximately 18×18 feet. The house is called the “rotor” house, because it actually has a turning rotor. You can use a remote and turn the house from your bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen. So when you decide you want to see or visit 
one room or another, simply pick up the remote control. There is also a toilet and a small hallway that is separately designated from the spinable rooms. The colors of this house make it look quite space age, as it is circular and white, with calming muted colors in the interior rooms.
Luigi Colani, a designer who was born in Berlin, was the mastermind behind this tiny house. Colani is quite the Renaissance man as he is a sculptor, painter, flight engineer, and philosopher. Colani’s car designs, and furniture designs have garnered awards and prizes over the years. His website is www. Colani.de. Currently, Luigi Colani is a professor in Shanghai.
Hanse Haus has been building pre-fab homes for 80 years. According to their website, the are “leaders in the field of energy-efficient house-building using the highest quality craftsmanship.” The Rotor House is energy-efficient and definitely quite the ingenious way to maximize inner space potential within a tiny house framework.
May 28 2009
Some days home renovations are easier than others. For example, I was just getting ready to get rid of the extra kitchen cabinet I removed when Rumi decided it was the new official Cat Cave.
In spite of him bonding with the cabinet, I did finally get rid of it after stubbing my toe on it one too many times during the night. I’m still getting a major guilt trip and sulks from the cat, though…
I have a feeling if feline-human relations continue to devolve, I may end up smothered in my sleep some night not too far off. (Especially if he can figure out how to use the bottle opener by himself.)
Time for some major sucking-up to the kitten methinks.
May 28 2009
One of the first things I did upon moving up to Portland was to join a Artist’s Way group led by Ingrid Kincaid.
The Artist’s Way is a book written by Julia Cameron. It is a program of “artistic recovery” and involves a twelve-week structure of exercises. I first did the program roughly a decade ago when the book first became popular in writing circles. I find it useful to repeat the exercises every couple of years. Moreover, I really enjoy being part of an Artist Way group because they tend to attract a fascinating mix of people I enjoy getting to know and spend time with.
The one thing I dread in the program is Week #4 because one of the exercises for that week is a week-long media fast. That means: no books, magazines, NPR, TV, movies, music with lyrics, email that is not work-related, frantic reading of the back of cereal boxes, etc. The point of the exercise is to disconnect from the constant stream of information our modern brains are constantly bombarded with so that one can more easily listen to one’s own internal voice.
Now, I don’t own a TV and I can fairly easily go a week without that or movies. Music is slightly more difficult as I really enjoy it, but I’ve got plenty of music without lyrics. However, I love NPR. And I’m thoroughly addicted to the written word. I am a voracious reader. Books are my sustenance and connection to the outside world. The thought of going without them, my news feeds, or non-work-related email for a week sends me into fits of anticipatory withdrawal.
Which, I’m afraid, also means it’s likely I’ll learn something worthwhile from the exercise. It’s hard to say, though, as I’ve never actually made it the full week before when I’ve completed the program. I’m going to give it my best shot this time, though.
Because I received a decent amount of email related to this website, I will be checking my personal email twice daily. I will also be online long enough to submit posts to both Coming Unmoored and the Small Living Journal. But if I seem a little scarce online the upcoming week, you now know what’s up.
The good news is that this exercise should free up some time to both work on my house and also to do more actual writing (rather than my obsessively following every bit of news related to the small home movement). I’ll keep you posted on how things progress.
May 27 2009
If you are seriously considering building a tiny home, there is a book that you must pick up. New Small Spaces: Good Ideas
Some of the spaces featured in the book are homes, while others are apartments. New Small Spaces starts out with the tiniest of small homes and works its way up. One of the outstanding smaller homes is the Shouldham Street Extension from Henning Stummel Architects in London. This tiny home may only be 161 feet, but it packs a lot of “wow” into that 161 number. The exterior of this tiny home is a lap wood ship siding that has been panted in various shades of gray with random Plexiglas strips placed throughout. The interior is just as creative, as the Shouldham Street Extension has walls that are gloss white. Perhaps most impressive of all is the way the interior and exterior interact to produce some very well framed shots that any photographer would love.
Ever so slightly bigger at 205 square feet, comes the Boxhome from Norway. The Boxhome was designed by architect Sami Rintala in 2007 and can be found (looking like some transplant from the future), in Oslo. This four room tiny home was designed with an eye towards energy efficiency, as well as creating a relaxing space. The outside of the Boxhome more closely resembles a work of modern art than it does a home. The polished metal exterior is broken up a highly asymmetrical plus sign shaped window pattern. The end result is just breathtaking.
Anyone seriously contemplating building their own tiny home, should really take a look at New Small Spaces. The Boxhome and Shouldham Street Extension are just two of the forty-one homes featured in the book. Most homes in the book are larger, and some homes are as large as 900 square feet.
New Small Spaces, quietly and elegantly, makes the point that brilliant design and innovative material usage can produce some truly amazing homes that can feel much more spacious and luxurious than their number of square feet would dictate. You can read more about this book at the Amazon link.
May 25 2009
How serious is the building industry about tiny homes and going green? Well… a giant corporation like Clayton homes is now involved in both building tiny homes and building green homes.
Tiny and green seem like they are both here to stay. You might not be familiar with Clayton Homes but they are gigantic, one of the Wal-Mart’s of housing construction. This massive company has built over 1.5 million homes since 1934 many of them mobile homes and modular homes. They have 12,000 employees, which they call “team members,” and have 35 different home building facilities. They also have a big hand in the financing of homes as well. So who owns Clayton Homes? A guy by the name of Warren Buffet. Maybe you’ve heard of him.
The i-House is the concept by Clayton Homes which mirrors much of what we have seen with tiny home and green home pioneers in recent years. The i-House uses solar panels, energy efficient windows compact fluorescent lighting and energy star appliances to cut down on energy cost. On the health front, the i-House uses bamboo floors and no V.O.C. paint, both a common fixture in the tiny house and green home movement. They have even incorporated water saving features such as a tankless water heater, low flow faucets and dual flush toilets. Additional water is saved via a rainwater catching system. Interesting.
They have several layouts of i-homes to choose from with catching names like “Layout A,” which is 723 square feet, “Layout B,” which is 991 square feet, and yes “Layout C,” also at 991 square feet. The homes have a very slick and modern look that will no doubt remind many small home fans of other tiny homes and green homes they have seen.
Having a giant corporation like Clayton get in the tiny home game could be a great thing for the planet. Clayton produces a lot of homes on an annual basis, and if they were to go green it would have a profound impact on the environment and the housing industry. Let’s hope the ideas of the i-house are for real and not just pr, as this would be great for all involved.
May 24 2009
So, I’m afraid I’m a little behind on my personal updates again. My day-job has been seriously kicking my butt lately. Probably in part due to this being our busiest time of the year. I’m going to be really glad when July rolls around and things start to slow down.
Anyway, playing catch-up…
Two of the other writers who are part of the Small Living Journal, Tammy from Rowdykittens and Amanda from Constructing a Simpler Life, came out to visit last week. Both Tammy and Amanda spent a night with me each, and all three of us got together for a long lunch at the Pearl Street Bakery.
Tammy arrived in town first, and I’m afraid she got the worst of the Portland weather the first day she came out and the night she stayed with me. She was a remarkably good sport about it, however. We spent a good portion of the day and evening just chatting. And the next morning as the weather began to clear, Tammy ran around the marina in her pj’s like a madwoman snapping a bunch of lovely photos. She also took several of Rumi swilling beer. You can see both sets of pictures here.
Tammy is just as upbeat, energetic, and sweet-natured as you would expect from the writing on her blog. She had Rumi completely charmed in under a minute flat. She even got him hamming it up for a camera which is a complete first. I had to keep a close eye on him when she was getting ready to leave. Otherwise, I suspect he might have tried to hitchhike along in her suitcase.
As already mentioned, Tammy is a bundle of energy. Thankfully, the weather cleared up from there and the rest of the weekend was gorgeous. She spent the next few days of her mini-vacation running over every corner of Portland, managing to cover more ground than I have since moving here. You can follow the rest of her adventures in Portland over on Rowdykittens.
Amanda rolled in late the following night. Her flight didn’t get in until close to eleven and by the time she found the marina it was approaching midnight. I was exhausted from a long week at work (and staying up well past my regular, wussy bedtime). Amanda was exhausted from being in the final stretch of her graduate degree program. Somehow, though, we ended up both being wired and yakking for a good two hours until I finally had to call it a night and get some sleep.
This would be all well and good except I then proceeded to wake up around my regular time – 5 AM since I’m used to dealing with clients on the east coast for work. Amanda, on the other hand, had no such aspirations to be up so early.
If my guestroom had been finished, Amanda might have had a fighting chance at catching a few more hours sleep. But she was stuck in my living room. And, to only make matters worse, Rumi was totally into the whole house-guest thing by this point. After having spent the previous morning with Tammy cooing over him at great lengths, he couldn’t wait for Amanda to wake up and do likewise. So I’m afraid he kind of tried to help things along.
Amanda is a down-to-earth, extremely approachable, wickedly funny Texan. Although she’s managed to lose a good portion of her accent from her time in California. Meeting her in-person helped me to understand how she manages to take such wonderfully candid photos of the people in the small home movement that are part of her thesis project. I can’t imagine there are many people who, in under a half-hour of meeting her, would hesitate to tell her pretty much anything about themselves.
I worked for the first half of the day while Amanda slowly stirred to life. Then the two of us met up with Tammy at the Pearl Street Bakery, where we had the most divine lunch of roasted eggplant pannini’s on fresh-baked bread.
Lunch with all three of us was great fun. We gabbed at length about the small home movement and various ideas we each had. Tammy was too well-mannered, but I pumped Amanda at length about her experiences interviewing various people in the movement as part of her thesis project. Amanda is a fantastic storyteller, which made listening to her all that much more interesting. And we chatted about all sorts of other things going on in each of our lives.
Naturally, I lobbied hard for both of them to move to Portland and help me start our own little small home outpost outside of Sebastapol, California. (With both of them bringing their other halves in tow.)
It was with some regret that I finally had to wrap-up lunch and get back to the marina (and the rest of my work day). Before heading on to the rest of her trip, Amanda interviewed me and also took some pics of both me and my floating home for her project. I haven’t seen any of the pics yet. But just based on some of the ideas she came up with, I’m really interested to see how they turned out.
Then Amanda went along her way and was off to interview Mokihana Salazar in the morning. You can follow the next leg in Amanda’s trip here.
Anyway, it was fantastic to meet both Tammy and Amanda in person. I rather selfishly hope they’re both back here soon!
May 23 2009
This video is getting a little dated but, as a tiny-houser, I still found it interesting. Christopher Deam is an architect and designer who drew national attention in 2000 when he redesigned the American icon, the Airstream trailer. In 2002, he presented an overview of the project to TED.
I imagine Deam’s redesign looks less radical to our eyes in 2009 than it did in 2000. But it’s interesting to me to see some of the solutions he came up with. Like most of the architects I admire, he is concerned with purpose, utility, and authenticity.
This video runs only 7 minutes which seemed like a good length for a holiday weekend. Happy Memorial Day weekend for those of you in the States!
Christopher Deam has also designed for Herman Miller and Target. For further information on his work, please visit his website.
May 22 2009
So all us tiny home bloggers are in a tizzy of excitement right now due to the Tiny House Project. A group of artists, architects, and people passionate about sustainable living have gotten together on a project to build a mobile tiny home neighborhood that will serve as a traveling art exhibition.
“The Tiny House Project will put out a call for submissions asking artists for tiny house project proposals. Specific criteria for these proposals are being developed with input from members of the Project’s Advisory Committee to ensure that the resulting structures meet artistic, environmental, structural and communication objectives. A qualified selection panel will choose nine tiny house projects from the pool of applicants to receive funding (a more detailed description of this two-stage call follows). Each artist/project team will be given a 7’ x 14’ trailer bed and $23,000 to cover the cost of materials and artists’ fees associated with designing and building a tiny house that will then be incorporated into a temporarily occupied micro-community and a follow-on traveling exhibition.”
So those of you who’ve been dreaming of building your own tiny home but worrying that you simply don’t have the funds–here’s your shot.
I’m really excited to see the designs generated by this project. In fact, even though I’m already in my own tiny home I’m really tempted to submit my own design I’d just so love to contribute to the project.
In particular, I’d really love to see some designs submitted that would work for the wheel-chair bound or people with other special needs (for example, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity). In addition, I’d love to see designs incorporating more green materials.
If you’re interested in learning more visit The Tiny House Project . Be sure to subscribe to their RSS feed and sign up on their mailing list.
RSS Feed