Hasta La Ideas

2022 has brought with it some exciting new tiny home designs! Sustainability has been running on everybody’s mind. Ever since the pandemic shook up our world, we’re trying to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of our life, including our homes! And, with everyone aspiring toward’s eco-friendly and mindful ways of living, tiny homes have completely taken over the world of architecture and cemented their place as sustainable, minimal, and economical micro-living setups. What started off as a cute little trend is now turning into a serious option for home spaces. They are a space-saving and eco-friendly living solution that reduces the load on Mother Earth! They’re simple and minimal alternatives to the imposing and materialistic homes that seem to have taken over. And, we’ve curated a wide range of micro-home setups that totally grabbed our attention! From an AI-enabled prefab tiny home to a tiny home built from three shipping containers – there’s a tiny home out there for everyone!

1. Wattle Bank home

Situated on a plot of land on Amy’s parents’ farm, the couple’s Wattle Bank home was designed and built by the modular home building company, Modhouse, founded by Amy’s parents Mark and Melissa Plank. Each 20-foot shipping container that comprises the tiny home connects to one another via integrated passageways. These hallways also help make the most of the available living space by hosting utility rooms, like the laundry and entryways. Throughout the home, floor-to-ceiling entryways and windows give the feeling of indoor-outdoor living, adding some extra space to the interior as well.

Why is it noteworthy?

While downsizing our lifestyle requires letting go of many luxury comforts, it also makes room for simpler life pleasures. Sure, getting rid of the pool might hurt a little, but more green space allows for more plant cultivation and harvesting. For one Australian couple, Amy Plank and Richard Vaughan, downsizing meant disbanding from domestic duties for the freedom to surf, garden, and enjoy nature whenever and however they like. Hoping to make their dream of a downsized, sustainable lifestyle a new reality, Plank and Vaughan found the freedom they hoped for in shipping container architecture. Merging three shipping containers together to form a 530-square-foot tiny home, Plank’s and Vaughan’s Wattle Bank home fits the bill.

What we like

• Provides a feeling of indoor-outdoor living
• Built using eco-friendly materials

What we dislike

• Not much to distinguish it from other shipping container-based architecture out there

2. Hewing Haus

Four basic units comprise Hewing Haus’ prefabricated tiny home catalog, ranging in size from 200sqf to 600sqf. Expanding on their commitment to sustainability, Hewing Haus constructs their tiny homes from cross-laminated timber (CLT), large-scale, prefabricated, solid engineered wood panels that “sequesters carbon making constructions fast, quiet and less costly,” as Hewing Haus builders describe.

Why is it noteworthy?

Hewing Haus is a prefabricated tiny home company that uses clean construction to build small-footprint tiny homes from sustainable materials. Responding to the demand for additional residences across global cities, the tiny home builders with Hewing Haus “leverage clean construction to build beautiful, small-footprint dwellings with the world’s strongest and most sustainable materials.”

What we like

• Carefully planned out to optimize floor space and maximize living
• Built using sustainable materials

What we dislike

No complaints!

3. Topol-27

Built entirely offsite, Bio Architect’s prefabricated construction process cut down on the energy otherwise required for the shipping and handling of building material. Once transported to its final location, the home was positioned atop an aboveground metal frame that gives the home a lofty appeal. Walking through the front door, the home’s residents are greeted by the kitchen and dining area that merges seamlessly with the single sleeping space. Then, on the other end of the home, a bathroom and dressing room host all of the amenities needed for comfortable living.

Why is it noteworthy?

Joining the tiny house movement, Moscow-based Bio Architects has finished work on Topol-27, a prefabricated, modular tiny home designed to “be picked up from the warehouse by the client, installed the same day, and be ready to live.” Comprised of five functional areas, Topol-27 is named after the square meterage it covers. With the aim of maximizing the available living space, Bio Architects fills Topol-27 out with a bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom, and dressing room.

What we like

• Built entirely offsite
• Built from environmentally friendly and durable materials

What we dislike

• The black metal overcoat gives the tiny home a bit of an obscure profile from the outside

4. Adraga

Called Adraga, the tiny home features an array of sustainability elements including solar panels, rainwater collection, and composting garden beds. As part of a larger series of tiny home one wheels, Adraga is home to a retired couple who just want to disconnect from the busyness of the world.

Why is it noteworthy?

Looking at Adraga from the outside, its unstained pinewood facades invoke simplicity. Defined by a rectangular, flat-roofed silhouette, the team at Madeiguincho found movement through windows and doors. On one end of the tiny home, a single, farmhouse-style door welcomes residents into the home’s subdued bathroom. There, against the soothing backdrop of walnut wood panels, residents can enjoy a semi-outdoor shower atop wooden floor slats.

What we like

• The layout of Adraga is designed to optimize the available floor space
• Incorporated with various off-grid elements

What we dislike

• In the bathroom, a dry toilet operates without flush water and closes the waste loop – but not everyone may be comfortable with using it

5. The Mansfield Container House

Named Mansfield Container House after the town where it resides, Walker’s tiny home is comprised of two 20-foot shipping containers that amount to 30-square-feet in total. Coated with heavy-duty paint, Walker hoped to maintain the industrial personality of shipping containers on the outside. Inside, natural, polished plywood clads the interior walls to help brighten the exterior’s heavy-duty look.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Mansfield Container House is an L-shaped tiny home composed of two disused shipping containers that merge together to form a tiny, off-grid cabin. Shipping container homes have redefined modern architecture. Designers and architects across the globe have turned to disused shipping containers to convert into insulated, tiny homes. Cost-effective, eco-friendly, and modular by design, shipping containers provide the ideal template for designers and architects to have at it and let their creativity fly.

What we like

• Solar panels were placed on the roof to generate and store solar power
• Water bladders were built into the roof to preserve 1,000 liters of rainwater

What we dislike

• Not much to distinguish it from other shipping container-based architecture out there

6. Moliving

Moliving is a nomadic hospitality solution made up of Scandinavian-inspired prefab tiny homes. Compared to the years that it takes to give rise to traditional hotel accommodations, Moliving boasts a 3-5 month construction, assembly, and installation process. Built with Green- Steel, proximity woods, and other sustainable materials, Moliving’s Hurley House units have a sustainable construction process as well.

Why is it noteworthy?

Moliving, a nomadic hospitality solution, has developed a line of Scandinavian-inspired, prefabricated tiny homes called Hurley House, which can be placed anywhere as tiny private retreats for guests to find relaxation. With hopes of providing city dwellers with a private, countryside oasis, Hurley House is set to replace Hudson Valley’s now-inoperative Twin Lakes Resort.

What we like

• Short construction + installation duration
• Built from sustainable materials

What we dislike

• The classic hotel suite-inspired interiors are unexciting

7. Riverside Cabin

On the banks of the Calle-Calle River in Valdivia, Región de Los Ríos, architects with Arce & Westermeier were commissioned to design and construct a shelter to function as a local professor’s riverside retreat. Located close to the Universidad Austral de Chile, the tiny home is called Riverside Cabin after its harmonic relationship with the Calle-Calle River. Brimming from the natural treeline that extends along the river’s edge, Riverside Cabin takes on an unconventional shape that embraces the home’s surrounding landscape and ecosystems.

Why is it noteworthy?

In the initial stages of designing Riverside Cabin, the architects with Arce & Westermeier asked, “What kind of relationship with the river do we want: a traditional one, which seeks that each program enclosure manages to please itself with this unique geographical element? Or rather, one that selects where and how this visual pleasure is obtained?” Upon realizing they’d like to explore the latter, Arce & Westermeier found Riverside Cabin’s unique look. Tilting one end of the cabin towards the sky elongated the internal volume and gave the ceiling lofty heights to accommodate the bi-level interior.

What we like

• Blends in with the surrounding architecture, without taking away from the available views of the river
• Built using prefabricated metal plates that brace Chile’s rainy climate

What we dislike

• Not everyone may find the home’s unique shape and tilt appealing

8. Cube One

Low-cost, prefabricated, and ready to live in homes are all the rage right now! And tiny home builder Nestron has jumped on the bandwagon with their latest AI-enabled home ‘Cube One’. Cube One is a 156 square foot home perfect for all kinds of residents – from single youngsters to large families. The value for money home has been equipped with built-in furnishings, voice-controlled tech, and a galvanized steel shell that not only lends it a sci-fi feel but also protects it from extreme temperatures and natural disasters.

Why is it noteworthy?

Much like a Rubik’s Cube, the dynamic Cube One can be customized and played around with! The interior can be customized with various add-ons and trimmings, including a kitchen with a bar counter, a wardrobe, a bed, a living area, and a shower accompanied by a toilet and laundry machine. It also comes fully equipped with smart technology which is experienced in the form of color controllable LED lighting, a television, sound system, and air conditioning.

What we like

• Built from recyclable materials
• AI-enabled

What we dislike

• Eco-friendly and sustainable elements like a compostable toilet, solar panels, and electric-heated flooring are integrated at an additional cost

9. IMAGO-iter

IMAGO-iter carries a 6.5m2 interior volume with 2.4 meters’ worth of headspace, providing just enough room for buyers to customize the space according to their needs. BESS took a customizable approach in designing every aspect of IMAGO-iter, so the mobile home is outfitted with only the bare essentials.

Why is it noteworthy?

Whether you use them as off-grid workspaces or campers on the go, mobile homes provide cozy getaways that we can bring wherever the wind takes us. BESS, a Japanese building firm that specializes in wooden houses, designed and constructed a mobile home called IMAGO-iter to join the party and move with our changing needs.

What we like

• You can choose between a traditional timber or a domed, wagon-like plastic membrane roof
• Suspension and electromagnetic brakes have also been worked into IMAGO-iter’s build to help ensure stable and safe driving

What we dislike

• Outfitted with only the bare essentials

10. 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.

Why is it noteworthy?

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.

What we like

• The living spaces of the Portable Cabin are framed by birch plywood panels
• Features discreet army green facades made from trapezoidal sheet metal

What we dislike

No complaints!

The post Top 10 tiny homes designed to be the best micro-living setups first appeared on Yanko Design.

While I consider myself mostly a digital person, there are still some aspects of my life where I prefer to do things analog. Things like journaling, memory-keeping, writing to-do lists, scheduling, I prefer to do on paper and then just back up digitally. And while we all have calendars on our phones, I prefer to have a desk calendar beside me while working and my wooden perpetual calendar for decoration purposes. So there really is a market for people who prefer the analog way of tracking things so this product concept is perfect for people like me.

Designer: Above.Studio

The Gnomon Perpetual Flip Calendar has one purpose: to tell you what day it is. While you can get calendars or your phone to do that, this is more of an analog, decorative type of tool to have on your desk. The act of flipping the calendar to get to the next day, accompanied by a clicking sound, can be considered mildly therapeutic for some people. It’s basically like literally turning over to get to a new day, at least if you’re doing this at midnight or early in the morning.

The gnomon is based on the mechanism of the perpetual calendar and it works as it’s supposed to. You just rotate the head part through the simple mechanism of the device and you get the date for the day (which you still base on an actual calendar of course). The head is intentionally heavy to give you that feeling of turning it over and giving that unique, clicking sound. There are no batteries or chargers involved as the only thing you need are your fingers.

The head is made from brass while the body uses acrylic materials. It is designed to come in various colors, both the head and the body, to match your desk decorations or whatever color you feel like looking at every day. Using the Avenir Next typeface gives the calendar an even more analog feel as it brings back the 1920s. The numbers come in three different lettering types to match the colors of the head and body.

While I’m happy with my current wooden perpetual calendar, this is an interesting concept to look at. The mechanism and the act of turning over the head is something that may interest me if it eventually gets turned into a consumer product. You can never have too many calendars around you.

The post Perpetual flip calendar lets you mechanically turn over a new day first appeared on Yanko Design.

Clutter-free doesn’t have to mean feature-less, especially if you have the multi-functional modular MagOrg Desk Mat on top.

Keeping our desks organized is as much a full-time job as our real jobs, and not all desks are designed to help put order to our chaos. Sure, many have drawers, but they only keep things out of sight and out of mind. Desk organizers group stuff together but can sometimes be just as disorganized as the stationery they corral. MagOrg solves this clutter problem with a system that lets you keep all these essential work tools within easy reach while giving each a proper home. And you can even mix and match pieces so you can size down as necessity dictates.

Designer: UDLAB Products

Click Here to Buy Now: $109 $189 (43% off). Hurry, only 4/20 left!

We’ve seen our fair share of desk mats, including ones that transform into portable workspaces with room for a laptop, notes, and pens. Almost all of those, however, come in a one size fits all package, where you get what you pay for, and that’s that. MagOrg, however, lets you customize your work area to your needs and liking in a snap, almost literally. The full setup utilizes all three panels, and though you can’t expand it with more panels, you can downsize to just two panels or even one panel based on your needs or available space.

MagOrg utilizes magnets to create a modular and customizable organization system where you decide how big or small you want to go. There are three large panels you can combine in different ways, and each one of them has a unique set of features that make them special. One, for example, has elastic bands similar to grid organizers that let you squeeze in notepads, highlighters, and more. Another has built-in wireless charging, where you can rest your phone while you work, confident it won’t die out on you anytime soon.

MagOrg, however, goes beyond just those two panels and includes accessories designed to boost your creativity. There is a magnetic pen holder that also doubles as a phone stand, a slim laptop stand, and ergonomic wrist pads for keyboards and mice. Everything you need to get your work done will have a place on the Desk Mat, so you won’t have to break your flow to look for them.

Desk Mate has the ability to increase and decrease its size from Large (900mm) to Medium (600mm) to Small (300mm) at any point in time.

Inbuilt wireless 15W fast charging.

The base is magnetic and can easily join with the desk mate.

Offers hands-free convenience and a comfortable viewing angle.

Inbuilt elastic separation and section helps to keep floating stationery.

Convenient for you to store loose papers and notes.

The adjustable angles reduce physical strain in your neck, shoulder, and upper back.

The memory foam-based material inside will help you maintain proper wrist alignment.

Water repellent and hence easy to clean.

The desk mats use quality vegan leather material with hydrophobic properties, so you don’t need to have a panic attack when you accidentally spill some of your precious coffee. With the MagOrg Desk Mat, desk organization no longer has to be a matter of making compromises, giving you the freedom to dictate the way you work rather than letting your desk put its own limits on you. With a clutter-free and flexible working area, you can approach work with more confidence and less stress, and maybe even take a bit of pleasure in how you have a stylish, professional-looking desk mat to work on.

Click Here to Buy Now: $109 $189 (43% off). Hurry, only 4/20 left!

The post MagOrg Desk Mat turns any table into a launching pad for productivity first appeared on Yanko Design.

There are plenty of visions and concepts of self-driving cars in the distant future. Some of them retain the conventional seating arrangement inside, just without the steering wheel and with plenty of touch screens. Others turn all seats inward, inviting conversations and social connections while the robot inside the car safely takes you to your destination. There might be times, however, when you just want to sit back and relax, enjoying the skies while coasting the future’s highways. In that future, you might not even have to be limited to your own location and gaze upon the starry skies of Tokyo on your way to work in New York.

Designer: Xiqiao Wang

The majority of futuristic car concepts seem to be content with decking the dashboard and windows with screens, some of them interactive even. These utilize almost all visible sides of the car’s interior to maximize the number of things people can see and touch. Strangely enough, all these visions leave out the roof of the cabin plain and boring, almost like they were stuck in the 2000s, a limitation that this Passion-Sharer self-driving car wants to break free from.

Although mostly inspired by Polestar’s Precept in terms of the basic aesthetic, this concept almost takes the language to the extreme and squashes the car almost to a box. The Passion-Sharer has sharper lines and edges than a typical car, and its lowered cabin makes you wonder if there’s even space for human passengers.

The secret is that the seats are actually reclined so far back that they’re almost horizontal, an angle that is more associated with sleeping rather than riding a car. This odd position is all for the purpose of having a clear view of the tinted roof that acts as the only literal window to the outside world. Most of the time, however, the Passion-Sharer’s passengers will be viewing someone else’s sky, or at least that’s the idea.

The “sky screen,” as it is called, can display real-time views of another Passion-Sharer owner’s sky, which would make it feel like they’re sharing the same sky. That does require that there are other car owners in transit during that time, though it’s entirely possible to simply have recorded footage for convenience. Of course, that touch screen interface can be used for other purposes, and it might be the only interface available in this car anyway.

To some extent, this Polestar-inspired Passion-Sharer carries a lot more safety risks than other self-driving car concepts. Given the inclined seats and lack of other direct controls, it would be almost impossible for humans to intervene in case of an emergency. It is a concept that requires autonomous driving technologies to be perfected before people can peacefully enjoy a serene sky without minding the heavy traffic in front of them.

The post Polestar Passion-Sharer car concept can display any sky in its cramped cabin first appeared on Yanko Design.

A side table is now more than just an essential furniture piece. It also serves as home decor and can be a conversation starter. We are always on the lookout for interesting ones that we believe can make quite an impact in the furniture design world.

No matter what your style, you will find the Wavelet interesting. The tabletop appears to be showing off a wave curl which isn’t just part of the aesthetic. The curl also doubles as a handle for when you want to move the table to a different location.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

Not that transporting a side table is a problem, but admit it, the wave curl as the handle makes sense. There really is no need for a handle, but the Wavelet is what “form meets function” is all about. You will probably think the solution is trivial, but it makes it easier to move the table from one location to another.

The Wavelet’s tabletop is plywood with a smooth finish and is bent on one side. The bent wood becomes the transport handle to make your life easier. It’s ideal for those who like to move things around the house—you know, those who can’t seem to be content with how they arrange their living room or bedroom. (Ehem, that’s me.)

Another exciting thing about the Wavelet is the leg portion. There are only three legs that meet in the middle to hold the tabletop. It’s sturdy enough to hold the table’s weight, but of course, we don’t expect you to put a lot on the table.

A metal version of the Wavelet has been rendered as well. Again, it is exactly the same minimalist side table except for the material, finish, and color. It appears to be spray-painted red with a smooth matte finish.

German furniture designer Deniz Aktay has studied architecture and urban planning. We have seen his other furniture design projects, and we can say his background and work experience have been helpful. His style becomes evident in how he creates, forms, and designs.

The designer believes that good design is about “finding the right harmony between proportion, material, and functionality.” He focuses on the appropriate materials, originality, simplicity, detailing, and proper element joining with this principle. For Aktay, designing a furniture item can be a challenging but exciting experience. The Wavelet Side Table is perfect proof of that simplicity and originality.

The post Wavelet Side Table’s curled side doubles as a handle first appeared on Yanko Design.