Off-Grid Retreat
An architect crafts an off-the-grid cabin as a gift to his father. The father of architect Greg Dutton wished to build a cabin on the family farm, located within Appalachian Ohio and home to 400 heads of cattle. Dutton, of Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio-based Midland Architecture, presented this design as his father’s birthday present in 2012. Finished in 2014, the 900-square-foot cabin overlooks a valley and a 13-acre lake. It serves as a weekend house and guest residence. During the cabin’s construction it became clear that connecting it to the water and electrical grid would be prohibitively expensive. As a result, the cabin operates entirely off-the-grid, and its sustainable features became an exciting aspect of the design process for the architect and his parents. The cabin’s earthy and rustic exterior belies a number of strategies that lets the residence operate entirely off-the-grid.

The retreat’s southern exposure maximizes sunlight with 24 feet of floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun’s warmth is absorbed and stored in the concrete floor, keeping the interior warm. Combined with thickly insulated walls, the cabin requires little additional energy, and has gone up to three days in winter without any electrical heating.