From fold-up huts to comfortable coffins, the Tiny House movement has allowed artists and architects to create homes that save space, save money, and prove that you don’t need a lot of square-footage to live a life of luxury! So today, we’re going to check out some of this unreal real-estate; viewing truck-bed lodges, camo cabins and fairytale-houses, as we explore the tiny homes so cozy, you’d want to live in them!
Diogene Villa
Living out in the wild has always appealed to me. But I’m not a fan of camping, and the idea of cramming myself into a sleeping bag and fighting off mosquitoes every night sounds pretty off-putting. However, the Italian architect Renzo Piano has me covered, because he’s gone from designing London’s tallest building, The Shard, to constructing a tiny 81-square-foot home that’s specifically designed to be used off-grid.
Diogene is named after the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who left all worldly goods behind him to live in a large ceramic jar. Fast-forward to 2013, and Renzo hoped to mimic this by creating the perfect place to leave your 9-to-5, retreat to nature and bring you closer to the great outdoors. The roof is fitted with solar panels that provide ample power for lights, an electric stove, and a refrigerator. Furthermore, it boasts sustainable features such as a composting toilet, and tanks under the house that collect and filter rainwater, before pumping it to the kitchen and bathroom! This makes the
home totally self-sustaining, and its foldaway furniture includes a desk, a chair and a sofa bed. But the entire structure only weighs 1.3-tons so it can be transported anywhere on the back of a large truck! This lets you pick up your home like a snail shell and carry it into the wilderness; leaving civilization like good ol’ Diogenes if his ceramic pot had plumbing!
ÖÖD Mirror House
ÖÖD is an Estonian company that specializes in mirrored tiny-homes that are almost invisible from a distance! They formed when brothers Jaak and Andreas Tiik wanted to create shelters that could be set up in nature without disrupting the surrounding landscape. So, their steel-framed houses have mirrored glass facades on 3 of the walls to make the structure blend in with the space around it!
There are several models, and two of their tiniest include the Signature House and the Glämping House. They both boast underfloor heating and great insulation, which means they stay warm in cold climates. Furthermore, the mirrored glass reflects the sun and keeps out 97% of its UV rays, which keeps the interior cool in hot conditions too. This means that the ÖÖD houses will always stay at a comfortable temperature, allowing you to use them to live in the arctic or the desert!Inside,
their Signature House is just under 230 square-ft, with enough room for a kitchenette, bathroom fixtures, and a double bed. Plus, the entire structure weighs 7.5 tons, so it can be transported in the back of a large truck. The house will set you back $80,000, but if that’s too pricy, then the Glämping House is a cheaper alternative at 24,500. It’s much smaller at a measly 100-square-feet, but it only weighs 3-tons, so it can be towed anywhere by larger pickup trucks. Despite its small size, it still has space for a communal seating area, a porch and a queen-sized bed, resulting in a pretty comfortable stay.
Full disclaimer, it doesn’t have any kitchen facilities or a bathroom, so it’s better for short camping trips than permanent tiny-living. But if you want a near-invisible cabin to hide-out in for a few days, you can just survive by peeing in the woods and roasting s’mores out on the porch!
Toronto Little House
Tiny-homes are often seen as a modern fad for hipsters, but the Little House of Toronto is a pioneering prototype that was built all the way back in 1912. This next house was conceived by a contractor called Arthur Weeden, when he noticed a small gap between two houses that was being used as a thruway for cars. Arthur saw potential, so he decided to buy the plot of land and use it to construct a house that was just 7ft wide and 47ft deep.
Weeden personally built the property, and the finished design included a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and even a thin garden! He utilized the space in these rooms by making the bed, tables and chairs foldable, with cabinets built into the walls!Living there might seem like a tight squeeze, but Weeden clearly enjoyed it, as he stayed there for 20-years with his wife and only sold it a few years after she passed away in the late 1930s. From there, the home moved between several owners until 2007, when it was renovated and sold again for $179,000. That seems pretty expensive for a 300-square-foot tiny-house, but to be fair, a cramped and moldy central Toronto apartment of a similar size would be far more expensive than Weeden’s cozy homestead.
Nido Woodland Cabin
Most tiny-house dwellers choose to live in them because they’re great for saving costs and being self-sufficient. But the Finnish designer Robin Falck built his for a very different reason: to outsmart the government.
According to Finland’s housing regulations, you need a permit to construct a building that measures over 96-square-feet. So in 2010, Falck did the most gloriously petty thing in the world, and built a woodland cabin in the Sipoo archipelago that was exactly 96-square-feet in size. This livable legal-loophole was complete with a living-room on the ground-floor and a bedroom on the second-story. It even has an outside deck to barbecue and take in the surrounding views, and I could totally imagine myself stargazing on the chairs and trying to catch a glimpse of the northern lights. If it gets too cold for that in winter, then fear not, because Falck also installed a skylight window that’s specifically placed at an angle to look at the stars.
Falck
built his cabin in just 2-weeks and christened it Nido, which means bird’s nest in Italian. The name tracks once you learn that he mostly used recycled materials to build it, much like a bird collecting debris to create their home.
In total, the nest ultimately cost this Robin just $10,500. So, if you’re concerned with rising house prices, it looks like it’s cheaper to just build one yourself! 10,000 bucks for a cabin in the wilderness with no noisy neighbors or permits is a bargain, and I might just go and look up some blueprints.
The Smallest Home In The World
I’ve had some pretty tense family arguments over Monopoly, but some people are so competitive that they need to make absolutely everything a challenge. The Bostonian artist Jeff Smith took this to the next level in 2016, when he tried to win at tiny-house building by officially creating the smallest home in the world.
His creation tested how tiny a residence could physically be before becoming completely unhospitable and it took him 2-years to build. That seems kind of long for such a small space. But every bit of furniture needed to be redesigned for the 25-square-foot building. The final home included a 1-person futon, 6 porthole windows made from repurposed pie plates, and a tiny front door with a mail slot. All this was successfully shoved into a 4 by 8 ft mini house on wheels, that was primarily made from sheets of recycled wood. But Jeff didn’t stop there. He then added a propane stove for cooking, a sink, a fold-out table and a toilet that’s essentially a sunken cat litter tray covered by a frisbee.
Smallest House in The World (Full Length) by Jeff Smith This means that to live in the home you need to be okay with peeing like a cat, and it’s also missing wi-fi, heating and air-con. So, it isn’t the comfiest stay in the world, but that’s because Smith partially wanted his art-project to satirize the tiny house trend, and see how small a house would have to be to deter people from living in it.
When it was complete, he listed it on Airbnb for $55 a night, and explained that if you booked a stay he’d load the whole home in his van and drive it wherever you wanted in the US. But it isn’t clear whether anybody paid for it and this project might be too small for even the most ardent tiny-home enthusiasts.
Seelenkiste Flat-Packed House
IKEA is the largest furniture retailer in the world, and lots of your homes are probably filled with Swedish tables and chairs. Personally, I can’t get enough of my Kolon floor protector, Barkass light and Billy Bookcase, but some people take their love of flat-packing a lot further.
Seelenkiste, which translates to Soul Box, is a flat-packed house that can be transported in a truck, laid on the ground and folded into shape anywhere you want. It was developed by the German architecture firm Allergutendinge, and it’s made from a timber frame and plastic panels reinforced with strong fiberglass.
It comes in prefabricated sections that are sandwiched together like a giant jigsaw puzzle before being connected with bolts. Then once you’re sure it’s standing upright, you secure the joints with lip seals so it’s watertight. If IKEA furniture is anything to go by, I imagine you could have some serious arguments while trying to assemble a flat-packed house with someone. And to make matters worse, you’ll need a small team of people to construct the Soul Box, creating even more tension. But once the 86-square-foot home is built, it holds a sleeping area, a study cubicle and a dining compartment over 2-floors, resulting in some seriously comfortable living. Even better, parts of the walls and roof fold-out to let sunlight in, and most of the furniture can be folded into the walls to maximize space! But this isn’t the only pop-up home on the tiny-house market. Brette Haus is a Latvian company that took the term box room to a whole new level by developing an
entire house that can fold into a cube. Their $20,000 Basic Cabin can be completely folded up and transported on the back of a large truck. Then when you unload and unfold, it can be placed straight onto the ground without a permanent foundation.
Long-lasting CLT foldable house prefabricated. Fast and simple installation by Brette Haus The homes are made from a durable and incredibly lightweight material called cross-laminated timber which allows it to be kept in place with bricks or screw piles instead of deep foundations. This lets you set up the Basic Cabin almost anywhere, and the interior boasts full plumbing connected to mains sewage, a kitchen area, a bedroom upstairs and electrical wiring that you can hook up with mains power. Or, you can just say ‘screw it’ and go completely off-grid with a provided sewage tank, water pump and solar panels. This origami house will make living in the wilderness feel incredibly homely, and when it’s folded, it looks just like a Christmas giftbox.
The World's Smallest House
With its luxury boutiques and grand palaces, London is one of the fanciest and most expensive cities in the world, so it probably isn’t that surprising to learn that their tiny homes are incredibly pricy too! This 188-square-foot apartment in North London contains one main room, and it’s so cramped that the owner has to step on the kitchen counter to reach the raised bed. There’s a tiny wardrobe-sized bathroom too, but it’s so compact that you can use the shower and toilet at the same time. How efficient and nasty.
A tour inside London's smallest home by The Telegraph I will admit the place has a pretty sleek design, and if you’re not too concerned about having space to walk around or a backyard, it would be the ideal city crash pad for a night or two. But even a house this tiny can’t escape the city’s insanely high prices, and it was listed for $450,000 in 2014.
The house is so small it has cushions on the floor instead of a couch, so this price seems eye-wateringly high. But London’s housing market is so competitive that people were desperate to live in it, and the realtors reportedly received at least 2 calls a day until the place eventually sold! Personally, this doesn’t exactly fit my idea of moving to a grand English manor, but if you want to shower and poop at the same time feel free.
AirLoft Treehouse
If you like the look of these tiny-homes but you aren’t sold on actually living in one, then why not go for a temporary stay in a tiny-hotel?
The AirLoft is a treehouse style Airbnb in Goppingen, Germany, that’s shaped like a large seed. The tiny-house is accessible via a towering spiral staircase, with nothing but a thin net to protect you from falling. Then once you’re inside, you’ll come to find 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom and a small kitchen, with unique furniture and a ton of tree-house themed books to while away the hours.
A stay will cost around $470 a night depending on the season, so this would be a pretty fancy vacation. But I think getting to realize your childhood dream of living in a treehouse kind of makes it worth it, as long as you remember to be careful on those stairs!If you’re afraid of heights then I’ve got another option, but be warned, you have to be pretty confident to stay there too. ‘Attrap’Rêves,’ or ‘Dreamcatcher,’ is a
French hotel near Marseille that lets their guests stay in tiny bubble rooms, that are completely transparent.
The hotel aims to let you camp out under the stars with all the comforts of a hotel room, which sounds pretty great in theory. But their see-through pods also put you on full-display, offering zero privacy. This idea might make you uncomfortable, but inside the pods are very comfy, with a king-sized bed, a tabletop heater, and a silent air blower that pumps clean air into the room and keeps it inflated.
SLEEP IN A PRIVATE BUBBLE | Attrap-Reves in France by Video Vision 360 The hotel offers different styles of room, ranging from ‘Love Nature,’ which has a fake grass floor, to Suite Chic and Design, which has an outdoor sitting area. The Aqua Room even comes with a jacuzzi next to the bubble, and thankfully, it’s a little bit more private than the sleeping quarters! Prices start at around $170 a night, which is pretty reasonable, and the stargazing here is supposed to be incredible.
Ford F-350 Truck Wooden Cabin
Everybody loves a road-trip, and the undisputed king of cross-country travel is the RV. But they can get pretty pricy, and if you can’t afford one, why not just build yourself a mobile home? Youtuber Timmy Johnson proved it was possible back in 2014, when he built a small wooden cabin in the back of a Ford F-350 truck.
He hand-built the home’s frame and walls from timber, spray-foam insulation and a waterproof membrane, before insulating the windows with silicon tape to keep the interior warm. Then he headed inside and fit it with a sofa-bed, a log-burner, a mini-fridge, and a small TV that’s powered with a solar-panel on the chimney. There’s also a faucet fed by a water tank and a stove for cooking.
TRUCK HOUSE LIFE - Episode 1 - Why? & Truck House Tour by Truck House Life
When Timmy was finished, he’d added all the comforts of a winter cabin to a standard truck, and he started living in his creation full-time in Alaska, while occasionally going on road trips around Canada. He uploads his adventures online for his 600,000 subscribers on YouTube and 760K followers on Instagram, and with his trusty truck cabin, he’s able to travel all over North America without ever leaving his house!
Sewage Home
Personally, the only time that I’d consider moving underground is when the inevitable nuclear, zombie or AI apocalypse breaks out. But some people currently choose to live down there, surviving in tiny homes right underneath our feet. Back in 2016, the citizens of Milan’s Lodi district discovered a series of individual rooms that had been hidden beneath manhole covers, decorated as a kitchen, a bathroom and a hallway!
They look homelier than my apartment, but they held barely any room for a person and no space to sleep, so people were confused as to who actually lived there. That is, until a street artist called Biancoshock stepped forward and explained that he’d built them as part of an art instillation called Borderlife. The rooms weren’t really underground homes, however, Biancoshock’s project was inspired by the 600-people who genuinely
live below the surface in the sewers of Bucharest, Romania. When the Romanian Communist regime fell in 1989, lots of orphanages closed, which released thousands of kids into the streets. These children sought refuge in Bucharest’s sewers, and decades later, they still occupy the underground tunnels and have grown up to form a full-blown subterranean society.
They mainly live in tiny, filthy crawl-spaces, but the sewers do supply heat for them, and their main interaction with the surface-world involves crawling outside to get food and water.
Romania: The Sewer Dwellers of Bucharest | European Journal by DW News Biancoshock’s instillation aims to explore how they’ve settled into a seemingly unhospitable place and made it their home, but those sewers definitely aren’t as homely as his artwork. Still, if you’ve got a hankering to live underground, there is a way to do it and stay completely comfortable! Atlas Survival Shelters is an American company that builds
bunkers for the apocalypse, and each one boasts the best mod-cons available. For starters, each bunker has gas-tight metal doors to fend off a chemical attack, and even if gas does seep in, the military-grade air-filtration systems will clean out the air around you to keep you safe. If you want to go outside and check that the coast is clear, an escape tunnel with a hatch allows exterior access. Then, a decontamination shower is waiting for you when you return, to remove any radioactive debris or zombie blood that you’ve picked up outside.
There are lots of different models, from tiny-home style bunkers to the platinum series, which comes with spacious master bedrooms, granite countertops and wine racks! But these luxury bunkers will set you back $5 million, and even the most basic, 100-square-foot tiny-model will cost you 50,000. So Atlas is only really a solution if you’re stinking rich, as you live out the apocalypse in luxury while us peasants suffer on the surface!
Antoine Mountain Shelter
If someone says you live under a rock it probably means you’re a bit disconnected from current events. However, if you live under this boulder, I can guarantee you’re completely cut off from the outside-world.
BUREAU A - Heart of Stone by Verbier 3-D Foundation This rock in the Swiss Alps is actually made out of concrete, and it contains a hidden wooden cabin built by the Swiss architecture studio ‘Bureau A’ in 2014.’ The mountain shelter is named ‘Antoine’ after a character in the novel ‘Derborence’ who gets trapped amongst some rocks during a landslide. But the timber cabin inside is actually pretty comfy, with seating, a table and a single-bed. It even has a fireplace, so you can stay warm in the colder months!As you approach Antoine, you can tell it’s fake due to its small window, visible door and chimney. However from a distance, it’s indistinguishable from a real boulder, and it isn’t the only rock n’ roll home that Bureau A has built.
This boulder abode is called ‘Therese,’ and it was constructed in the woods near Sergy, France back in 2022. The cabin is a bit more conspicuous than Antoine, because of its large porthole window. But it’s much roomier inside, allowing space for a table with benches, and a double bed on a mezzanine that’s accessed with a ladder.
Therese is larger than Antoine, but both structures are built on light foundations, so they’re easy to lift and move on the back of a truck. This makes them the perfect tiny-home to hide from the world, as you can camouflage yourself in the wilderness and finally feel proud to live under a rock!
Treehouse Living
When I was a kid, I always dreamt of living in a tree like Peter Pan, but my parents told me it was impossible. However, those idiots were wrong, and you don’t have to move to Neverland to make this a reality! The Hercules Tree is a redwood in Mountain Home Grove, California that’s so large that it’s been used as a building.
In 1897, a rancher called Jesse Hoskins discovered the tree and carved a large chamber inside the trunk, before adding entrance stairs and a door. He tried to live inside it for a while, but he found that it continuously leaked sap over the living space. So, Jesse moved out and used it to sell wood-carvings to passersby instead. Today the chamber is empty, but it endures as a popular tourist attraction, and it isn’t the only redwood that’s been used as a home. In 1925, Minnie Stoddard Lilley and her husband bought a 55-acre piece of land in Piercy, California, and found that it included a redwood tree that had been hollowed by lightning thousands of years ago. It stood unused until 1929, when a highway was constructed through the woods, and some of the construction crew temporarily lived inside it as they worked! When the highway was finished tourism rose in the area, and the workers inspired the Stoddard Lilley’s to build a permanent gift-shop inside the tree. They added a door and windows, and in 1933 the
treehouse made headlines when it was named the world’s tallest home in a Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not’ newspaper feature.
It became somewhat famous, and passersby regularly stopped to look around its cramped interior. But today, it’s reportedly totally abandoned, allowing anyone to camp for the night in a tiny-building that’s straight out of a fairytale!
Hobbit House
I had a Lord of the Rings marathon last weekend, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how magical it’d be to live in the Shire. But I don’t want to dwell underground, and if I was Frodo Baggins, I’d rather live in this hobbit home in Haida Gwaii, Canada.
Artist Noel Wotten created this tiny-treehouse with the stump of a felled Sitka Spruce, which is a species of conifer that can grow up to 300ft tall. Their trunks typically span 8-12ft wide, and Wotten hollowed this one out to create a one-room space with DIY wooden furniture, hand-carved shelves, a window and a shingle roof in the shape of a wizard’s hat.
Tiny hobbit home carved from a stump is straight out of a fairytale by Home Build Stories He named it the hobbit house and in the end, the whole project took 22-years to complete. But the result was a cozy, fairytale building that Wotten primarily uses as a music room due to its incredible acoustics. The walls are adorned with notes from musicians who’ve visited the stump while travelling through the area. But inside there’s plenty of room for a camp-bed, and the tiny-home would definitely make a fine house for a hobbit who doesn’t want to be stuck underground!
Boot House, Isle Of Wight
Did you ever hear the nursery-rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe? Well, it turns out it’s not just a story, and a giant house-sized boot does exist on the Isle of Wight, England. This massive concrete shoe is nestled in the woods near the town of Ventnor and it comes equipped with a door, a roof and 2-storeys that have fallen into complete ruin.
Uncovering The Hidden Fairy Tale Shoe House Of Isle Of Wight's Undercliff! by Abandoned Isle of Wight One source claims that an old woman actually lived inside the shoe during the 1950s, where the structure functioned like a tiny house with an upstairs bedroom! Then, when she passed away, the new owner turned it into a play house for their children and it slowly decayed over the years.However, not everyone’s convinced by this story. In 2020, photos of the strange home were posted online, and the uploader claimed that the boot was actually part of a children’s summer camp that allegedly stood in the area in the 50s. Apparently the shoe was abandoned when the camp closed, and nobody’s ever actually lived in it. But it’s unclear which story is true, and whether the concrete boot has been occupied or not, I think it could be renovated into the perfect tiny-house and a boot-iful home.
Ground Fridge Tiny Home
If you went for a walk in the woods and stumbled across this, you’d probably think you’d found a top-secret government bunker.
However the truth is less exciting because what you’re really looking at is a refrigerator. The ‘
ground-fridge’ is a tiny-home style root-cellar created by Dutch designer Floris Schoonderbeek, that allows you to keep your food cool without the use of electricity. The room is buried 6ft underground, where the surrounding earth and the refrigerator’s insulation keeps the interior between 50-53 degrees. This means that it will keep food fresh for a long time, and its 3,000 liters of storage is able to hold the same amount as 20 standard refrigerators!
The ground-fridge is made for refrigeration, but it holds a 6-month supply of food, a solar-powered ventilator that fills it with breathable air, and a light. Furthermore, the wooden shelves are easily removable to give you enough space for a sleeping bag, so I think this sealed underground pod could be used as the perfect survival shelter.
It’s a tight squeeze, but the groundfridge costs $17,000 which is significantly cheaper than most personal bunkers. So in the event of an apocalypse, moving into this refrigerator might be your best option for survival if you remember to pack some blankets to handle the cold!
Skip House
Everybody who visits my apartment calls it a dump, but my place has nothing on the tiny-home built by Harrison Marshall; an artist who went viral for living inside a dumpster. The Skip House was hand-built in London back in 2023, and the wooden-structure measures just 11.8 by 5.9ft.
Inside, Harrison crammed in a small kitchen with a cooker and a refrigerator, as well as a bed, a desk, and tons of storage. The entire project cost around $5,000 to build, and his only real expense is $65 a month to rent the dumpster, making it London’s cheapest apartment!
You might’ve already heard of Harrison’s Skip House because it garnered a ton of attention online. But it wasn’t his first rodeo, and he built the similar
Feelings Library all the way back in 2021. From the outside, the discarded haybales look like evidence of a weird art installation, or a farmer who’s called it quits.
You wouldn’t think there’d be an inside at all, but as you get closer and spot the library’s door, you can enter the haystack’s cozy interior. Marshall wanted the space to give city-dwellers the opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of London, by browsing through the library’s books, journaling their thoughts or even having a power-nap!
The structure itself is made out of recyclable timber, screws and bolts. However, real-hay was used to hide the library, so it was only a temporary feature during December 2021 as the biodegradable shell eventually rotted away. That’s a shame, as I’d definitely like to cozy up here for a read. But at least Harrison’s tiny-house is still standing, so we can just hang-out there instead without worrying about our hay-fever flaring up!
1.8 Meter House, Tokyo
If I told you I lived in a house with 4-stories, you’d probably picture me kicking back in a grand mansion, and you definitely wouldn’t think that space would be an issue. However, the 1.8 Meter House is a vertical apartment in Tokyo that can get a little cramped because the property really is just 1.8-meters, or 5.9ft wide!
The house was built by the architecture firm YUUA on a narrow plot of land in a crowded neighborhood. But the property isn’t strictly a tiny-house, because it’s also 36ft tall and 36ft long! This has allowed the architects to make the thin plot feel open, with high ceilings and stretching rooms that are essentially four long corridors.
Living in a 1.8-Meter-Wide House? Here's the Design! by UNIT TWO
This layout fits all the rooms you’d expect in a regular house, and you can navigate through them with a set of small staircases and ladders. It even has a ‘Genkan’ on the ground floor, which is a traditional Japanese front entrance! Like most tiny-houses, genius space-saving methods are used to fit these rooms. The kitchen counter extends out to create a dining table, whilst also doubling as a platform to access a ladder leading up to the next floor. Furthermore, it doesn’t feel cramped in the house, as the walls were painted dark colors to give a sense of depth, and the floating staircases let light filter through! Ultimately, the narrow-house feels pretty roomy inside, and as cities get more crowded it makes sense to construct small homes in the gaps and cracks! After all, who said every house has to be short and fat! I hope you were amazed at these tiny homes! Thanks for reading.
