Cabins

The $85K off-grid tiny home on wheels Gonçalo Marrote designed in Mafra, Portugal, looks to views of rolling hills and wide-open sky.

After a wildfire ripped through Jeff Waldman and Molly Fiffer’s 10-acre retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains in August of 2020, the couple was determined to build a new home. They were hesitant about investing too much money, though, as they knew that California was only getting drier and more prone to fires.

An outdoor shower is always a treat, and this one is no exception.

“Initially, we proposed fewer glass panes to control sunlight and energy loss,” says architect Daniel Iragüen. “But in the end, we made the house almost completely transparent.”

“Where we let loose was on the window,” Matt says. “It’s an aluminium window frame, which is bushfire compliant and easy to install, but the way that we detailed it was about hiding the frame so that the eye is drawn into the space.”

Architect Matt Wittman’s upbringing in rural Washington nurtured a respect for functional buildings that worked with their surroundings: a utilitarian perspective that would inform his Seattle-based studio’s modular home system. “While prefab houses are sometimes divorced from their context, Puzzle Prefab can be modified according to each site,” Wittmann says. “This system has the ability to create spaces that can expand or contract for a variety of environments, whether remote, suburban, or urban.”Architect Matt Wittman’s upbringing in rural Washington nurtured a respect for functional buildings that worked with their surroundings: a utilitarian perspective that would inform his Seattle-based studio’s modular home system. “While prefab houses are sometimes divorced from their context, Puzzle Prefab can be modified according to each site,” Wittmann says. “This system has the ability to create spaces that can expand or contract for a variety of environments, whether remote, suburban, or urban.”Architect and Majamaja cofounder Pekka Littow designed a seaside retreat in Finland to showcase the potential of self-sustaining homes. The first cabin was built in 2020, and there are now four along the archipelago outside Helsinki. Prefabricated elements like vertical wood cladding and crisp gables allow the cabins to be dismounted with minimal impact on the landscape.

In 2020, Isabel and David Yahng bought their Portland house, which was originally designed by architect Saul Zaik in 1963.

The cozy, 323-square-foot cabin is a cozy retreat amidst the vast landscape it inhabits.

A worm filter system treats all of the home’s black water, producing fertilizer to regenerate the soil.

The walls now have 10

An outdoor breezeway between the storage shed and the main house is ideal for outdoor dining.