We’ve looked at a few tiny homes, most of which make the most of their space with lofts, extra storage, and windows. If you’re looking for a home with green features and a beautiful interior, the tiny home by Berlin-based Futteralhaus is a great building to look into.
Size and Shape
The tiny home itself has a footprint of 269 sq ft (25 sq m), with a living space of 205 sq ft (19 sq m), and a terrace of 194 sq ft (18 sq m). This home is almost the same size as the AVAVA Britespace tiny house, which is 270 sq ft.
The home itself is rectangular; it’s an amalgamation of two compartments separated by a bathroom unit. The glass facade makes the interior feel a lot larger. The designer built in a lot of storage throughout the house.
Ease of Transportation
This house can hold up to four people, and it’s possible to put the tiny home anywhere in both urban and rural settings.
The structure is delivered pre-assembled by truck. “The houses can be set up quickly and easily. They do not require any kind of complex foundation, and six isolated footings offer enough support,” designer Nataliya Sukhova, of Transstruktura in Berlin, says.
She’s referring to a type of foundation in which individual foundation pads transfer weight into the ground. A terrace in two parts and requiring three additional footings come with the house. Sukhova says it needs to be at least 6 inches above the ground, which means that the entrance of the house is two or three steps up.
Futteralhäuser literally translates into “case houses”, which offers families the possibility of flexible, movable and sustainable living. After building his first prototype, Kurennoy asked Sukhova to design a minimalist house that could be mass-produced. She found a creative balance between comfort and minimalism by using a small number of materials to create continuity throughout the house.
She designed built-in furniture and stuck to a simple floor plan. “We used white-stained coniferous wood for the whole interior: the ceiling, walls, floor and built-in furniture. This way the interior looks uniform and roomy,” Sukhova says. The living space is designed to be a single continuous structure that looks and feels like a home.
Quality
The kitchen includes a small countertop between the stove and sink. The fridge, dishwasher, ventilation hood, and storage space are hidden behind kitchen cabinet fronts. The kitchen also includes the batteries for the solar energy system. This system supplies the house with electricity, including powering the Möhlenhoff trench heating that runs along the large window.
The dining area table and chairs complement a multi-functional bench against the wall. “The bench features a drawer to store things. It can also be transformed into a spare bed,” says Sukhova. There’s even more storage space above and to the left of the bench.
The bathroom stands wall-to-wall with the kitchen. It has a walk-in shower which faces a sink with a wall mirror above it. The mirror helps expand the size of the bathroom by making it look twice as large. The toilet is next to the bathroom door
When you place the house in the right position (south and unshaded), the tiny home is heated naturally. The wide sliding window wall allows for air circulation. The house’s largest bed, located in the bedroom, can pull-out from a single into a double bed. The house also comes with a bed converted from the bench in the dining area
Cost
The basic version of the home with a bathroom costs around $53,000. The optional extras, like the kitchen, furniture, and floor heating increase the total cost from there.”The model with a floor space of [269 square feet] is the largest that can be built without a building permit in certain countries, such as Sweden,” Sukhova says.
With a large budget, the home can expand to as much as 1,075 sq ft. “The prototype is painted with black paint manufactured by the Latvian Paint Eco. It is made of boiled linseed oil, mineral pigments, and binders. It’s a strong, distinctive color.”
A huge win for the international community for this house, which delivers across the world, not just in the United States, like all of the other homes we’ve looked at.
Sukhova focused on recycling and the minimalist design of interior spaces. “[We] designed to be connected to the local sewage system, but it’s also possible to use self-sufficient systems such as a composting toilet and a rainwater cistern,” she says. A bathroom fan helps circulate in-house air.
Read on for more ways to save on cost with this tiny home.
Carbon Footprint
Futteralhaus purposefully built the house to circulate air naturally. The insulation is wood fiber from Steico. The building meets the requirements of the German Energy Saving Ordinance of 2014. It also has an energy performance certificate. The prototype is built out of triple-ply wooden panels, equipped with a humidity barrier film.
“Alternatively, there can also be an interior lining of Diagonalplatten,” Sukhova says. She’s referring to wooden panels connected mechanically by an airtight “dovetail” joint and arranged diagonally to increase their load-bearing capacity. “In that case, the humidity barrier is not necessary. That’s why we find this material so great.”
“A charging station for electric cars can even be added as an extra,” Sukhova says. This is a totally unique feature that none of the other tiny home companies advertise.
Another cool feature of the home is that excess solar power can be sold over the internet to other Futteralhaus owners who have electric vehicles. A custom app lets them offer their house as a vacation home or order food and other goods. Futteralhaus earns money whenever an owner sells power or rents out his or her home.
Other Notes
This house is cool. Not in an in-your-face way, but in a more subtle sense that you feel when you look at all of the thought put into each feature of the home. It has a really great balance of green energy and interior design, especially compared to the other tiny homes we’ve looked at.
Sources: New Atlas
