Solar Decathlon 2013: SHADE
Solar Decathlon 2013 wrapped up last week and we’ll be taking a look at a few of the entries. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Solar Decathlon is a biannual event… Continue reading
Category Archive: Small Energy Efficient Houses
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A loft-like laneway house by Lanefab
Lanefab Design/Build recently completed this laneway house in the backyard of their clients’ existing house in Vancouver, Canada. The owners are renting the laneway house out for now but plan to eventually move… Continue reading
R.House, a prefab home for rural Scotland | Rural Design Architects
With its rugged landscape and scenic natural beauty, Scotland’s Isle of Skye has become a popular holiday destination. But like many tourism hot spots where outsiders are snapping up properties, that popularity has… Continue reading
Studio37, a modern prefab cottage | Small Modern Living
More and more cities are allowing small houses to be built in the backyards of existing houses. Whether called accessory dwelling units, granny flats or garden cottages, they increase urban density without changing… Continue reading
The Soleta zeroEnergy One
The Soleta zeroEnergy is a new family of modular eco-friendly houses by the Justin Capra Foundation for Inventions and Sustainable Technologies (FITS) in Romania. FITS set out to design flexible homes that would… Continue reading
A prefab retreat in the Nevada desert | nottoscale
The high desert of Nevada, just east of Death Valley, is a pretty barren and inhospitable place. But for the owners of this small vacation house, there is beauty in the parched landscape… Continue reading
The Diagon Alley passive house in Colorado | WorkshopL
This small house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado combines modern design and a cutting-edge super-insulated building envelope with a traditional exterior appearance. As its name suggests, the Diagon Alley house sits just off the… Continue reading
A straw bale cabin | AATA Arquitectos
This small cabin in a rural area of central Chile uses little energy and has a low carbon footprint. AATA Arquitectos designed the cabin, opting for a two level floor plan to minimize… Continue reading
River Road House, a beautiful timber frame dwelling | Nir Pearlson
River Road house is a small timber frame dwelling in Oregon designed by Nir Pearlson, Architect Inc., a small firm with an interest in green design. They were asked to create a comfortable… Continue reading
The Edge modular home | Boutique Modern
The Edge is a distinctive modern dwelling manufactured in Britain by Boutique Modern Ltd. They produce modular houses that are designed with sustainability and energy-efficiency in mind. One design element that makes the… Continue reading
The low-impact “Hen House” on the Isle of Skye | Rural Design
This unique small house can be found on the western coast of Scotland’s Isle of Skye. It was designed by the architects from Rural Design Architects to fit in with the vernacular crofters’… Continue reading
The E.D.G.E., a small prefab house | Revelations Architects/Builders
Following the 2006 housing market crash in the United States, Revelations Architects/Builders set out to design a small house alternative to the bloated McMansion that had become so prevalent there. They aimed to… Continue reading
Fish Creek Guest House | Carney Logan Burke
Architect Jim Carney of Carney Logan Burke Architects designed this small modern house for his wife and himself. It is intended to become their guest house, but they are living in it for… Continue reading
Net-zero solar laneway house by Lanefab Design/Build
Lanefab Design/Build recently completed this energy-efficient laneway house with Mid-Century Modern styling. “Laneway house” is the term used in Vancouver, British Columbia for a second small house built in the backyard of an… Continue reading
A shingled backyard cottage | Studio Eccos Design
Homeowner Kol Peterson provided these photographs of his appealing shingled cottage. It is an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), a small house built in the back yard of an existing house. ADU’s go by… Continue reading
Small House On a Hillside | Vladimír Balda
This small shed-roofed house is at the edge of a suburban area in the Czech Republic. It sits on a steep slope facing to the north. Architect Vladimír Balda designed it with a… Continue reading
The Dune House | William Morgan
This small earth-sheltered house in Atlantic Beach, Florida is actually a duplex, two near-identical homes of 750 ft2 (69.7 m2) each. They were built in 1975 by architect William Morgan to use as vacation rentals.… Continue reading
The Mini-B, a small passive house | Joseph Giampietro
The Mini-B is a small prototype dwelling intended to demonstrate that building to the Passive House standard is achievable and affordable in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and will result in comfortable, energy efficient… Continue reading
