Precedents

From a distance, the grass-covered roof disappears into the native landscape.

Located in Ojochal, Costa Rica, at the edge of a large tropical rain forest, the multi-disciplinary firm of A-01 (A Company / A Foundation) designed a prefabricated home that would respond to its local environment by exclusively using passive climate control.

When an urban couple decided to build an affordable tiny house outside the city as a retreat from their busy lives, they found a site in the Stockholm archipelago and called on architect David Lookofsky of Lookofsky Architecture.

The home was designed as much for outdoor living as it was for indoor living, with a large porch around the home.

Simple shed roof design with steel siding gives the home texture.

Large sliding glass doors open onto a backyard retreat complete with a fire pit and swimming pool.

Tall glass windows in the living room frame the view.

Perched quietly on the dunes of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, Hut on Sleds serves as a small, sustainable beach retreat for a family of five.

You can buy just about anything on Amazon these days, from mundane household necessities to garish novelty items—and now, there are even DIY kits to help you construct your own tiny guest house, shed, office, or lounge. Take a look at the prefabricated units Amazon has to offer, and get ready to upgrade your backyard.

Glass doors open the home to an expansive wooden deck overlooking gorgeous Alpine views.

Architect Mark Fullgar chose corrugated steel, aluminum window frames, and strengthened glass—cost-effective, non-combustible materials, given the cabin’s location in a rural fire zone.

The Estonian prefab company is bringing stylish, modern tiny homes to urban and rural areas alike.

The top priorities for Chalet M—a small, plywood cabin in the suburban area of São Lourenço da Serra in São Paulo, Brazil—were to ensure the lightest possible footprint on its forest site, and to maximize the experience of being one with nature for its owners.

Full-height sliding glass doors bring a sense of the outdoors into the home.

The home’s geometric silhouette echoes the classic typology of the region’s gable roof barns. “We took our inspiration from this vernacular architecture and re-interpreted it with a contemporary twist,” Dworkind says.

The sleeping area is raised and flush with the height of the countertops, allowing for storage underneath.