Tiny House Design

A couple of days ago I posted the story of a high school class in Canada that is going to actually build three tiny houses from student designs. Ben, the student that contacted me originally, won third place, his brother won second, and their good friend Dany same up with the house they will build first. Here’s what Dany told me:

After finishing all our plans every student prepared a little presentation to promote their model to the class. Then we voted on three aspects of the plans: reliability, ease of construction, and creativeness. My house was the winner. Ben‘s brother Mathieu came in second and Ben won third place. Now we are starting construction of our houses in the school shop. We will start by building my house and then we will build Mat’s house and then Ben‘s. I believe my house was declared the winner because of the simplicity of the building. My plan does not require to much material to build and it can be a very versatile little house because the loft that can be used for many purposes.

I’m just amazed that any school would host such a wonderful project and I’m really looking forward to seeing photos of the houses during construction. I’ve also noticed that these students are really getting excited about using their drafting tools, which is mainly Google SketchUp. The school they attend is École secondaire catholique Embrun in Embrun, Canada.

Ben has even started up a blog of his own to record some of the other designs he’s coming up with. You can visit Ben’s blog at bentinyhouse.wordpress.com.

Below is the winning design by Dany. Congratulations Dany!

Yesterday a student named Ben from Embrun, Canada shared with me this tiny house design that he made with Google SketchUp. He and his school gave me permission to show it to you and share a little background on this school project.

Ben is taking a construction class at École secondaire catholique Embrun. This drawing is his contribution to a class assignment. Three houses including one student design will be built by the class. One of the houses will be sold to raise money for the school and the other two will be recycled for future projects. I really admire Ben’s design for it’s simplicity and the novel second story deck. I also suspect his design would be fairly easy to build.

This project seems like a great idea for a class of new designer/builders. Designing smaller spaces can be a good place to start because they are easier to manage but tiny houses also push them to consider every detail because there is little room for error. Continue Reading »