Last year, I was introduced to the amazing Sharon Lee at Seattle’s LIHI (Low Income Housing Institute). A year before we met, LIHI had started to pioneer Tiny House Villages as a rapid response to the ever more concerning homeless situation in our cities. As permanent housing takes some +/- 5 years to get financed, sited and built, LIHI proposed these Tiny House Villages as an interim housing solution that they could have up and running 4 months after agreeing a site. Fantastic stuff.

I thought I could make a contribution to the design of what were essentially decorated sheds, by thinking of them as architecture. My view was, these tiny homes needn’t be the lowest common denominator storage boxes – lets make manifest through architecture, a representation of the possible, of the hope for things to come.

There were a few key architectural actions we could deploy that I think would improve the psychological efficacy of these sheds, without adding too onerous a cost increase. Namely: adding a skylight, planting a tree associated with each unit by pulling in one corner to create a sliver planter, cutting the front door in two, and creating a wee stoop. These ideas didn’t get very far for a number fo reasons, notably that LIHI were already having great success creating these Tiny House Villages, so there was no need to break the formula.

Instead, I was invited to be involved in the design of a new LIHI venture, a Tiny House Cottage. These were going to be comparatively large (+/- 300 square feet vs 100 square feet) and permanent. Aside from their modest size, the other key idea for keeping the costs down on these Cottages is that they were to be pre-fabricated with high school students and trucked onto a, on-site poured slab. A nice design problem to be sure.

See my LIHI Cottage Design Presentation.

Some guiding design ideas – how to move them from being houses, to becoming homes

  • Closing the door/being safe
  • New constructions, needn’t automatically be conceived of as mere 8’ high boxes. (To be clear, I don’t advocate for the complexities of curved walls or roofs. Rather, i’m advocating for non-orthogonal spaces and form. Tapered rooms – sense of expansion/compression . leave space on the side for a small garden within the plot. -> its not a box!)
  • Include a skylight – not an extra. Having an ongoing visual access/axis to the sky is important for us all. Aspirational, promotes reaching, dreaming, possibilities. and yet the ever present light, is grounding and promotes connection to the earth.
  • A house & garden together, a garden is not an extra. (plant a tree with each house, in the spare wedge of the layout)
  • Shed roof’s are economical, functional in this Pacific Northwest rainy temperate climate. And if reoriented, they provide interesting spatial and shelter opportunities.
  • Needn’t be symmetrical – Move door off centre – rather than two equal inadequate spaces, you have one more useful space.
  • Tiny house villages, needn’t be orthogonally arranged. instead, arrange them loosely, crookedly, possibly in pairs or groups of three, with an overall logic of a circular path among the houses.