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All Photos/exterior/building type : small home/building type : house

Exterior Small Home House Design Photos and Ideas

After staying in a tree house listed on Airbnb, Remo Kommnick and Emi Moore wanted their own getaway in the woods. "It was amazing being up in the trees,
A family chose MyCabin to construct prefab structures in their home country of Latvia. The prefab structures have space for work, sleep, and relaxation.
The accessory dwelling unit behind the home of Sonja Batalden in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has cheery yellow siding that the entrance appears to carve into. “If the yellow of the siding is the wrapper on the candy, this is kind of like the gooey middle,” architect Christopher Strom says about the thermally modified ash lining the entry.
The overall home is constructed with larch timber, a British wood, and features a central ridge beam that gives it a butterfly-shaped roof. Shou sugi ban was done on the wood to give it a charred finish.
The buildings on the property sit close together, with carefully considered landscaping connecting them into a cozy compound. The main house's deck, which sits about 15 feet above the ground, sits on structural fins. Thin stainless steel railings almost disappear against the forest views.
The preserved grove of Redwoods is just past the house. “They loved the house that was there so much that, it was important to create something that wasn't trying to replace it, but would function for them in a different way,” says Boyer. Thus, this cabin reconnects the couple to the land, and gives them “that place of refuge” they need in nature.
The cabin has charcoal-colored metal siding and a punchy yellow-green front door for contrast.
Boyer first visited the site in 2018 for the redesign. Having grown up in the area, it was awful to see the devastating effects of the fire, but there were also signs of regrowth just a year later. “The redwoods had started to grow a little fuzzy green against the charred black [bark],” says Boyer. “It was kind-of promising. It felt hopeful that nature was coming back so quickly.”
One of the selling points of the cottage was the meadow surrounding it, which the windows in the addition seek to capture.
The home’s 2,340 square feet span the upper and lower levels, while the basement can serve as an independent ADU, home office, or guest quarters. The lower-level entry is now more comfortable, with a wide waiting area protected from the weather overhead.
The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade
The Bracy Cottage — Front Facade
Now, there are two different seating areas off the back of the house, rather than facing the driveway and neighbor as they did before.
A custom concrete planter is now home to a 70-year-old olive tree. The couple reconfigured the front porch to allow for a straight path between the front door and the driveway for better circulation.
Jeffrey Bokey-Grant gives his family’s traditional cottage an award-winning remodel that adheres to the original footprint. The original brick worker’s cottage is estimated to have been built in the 1920s. "The house had since been victim to neglect and a series of questionable improvements over the course of its life," says Bokey-Grant.
Nicknamed La Madriguera (The Burrow), this cozy, 538-square-foot home in Madrid is wrapped in lush greenery and mirrors that reflect the surrounding gardens.
Front Exterior
The Lookout occupies the alley side of the lot. “It’s a white box hovering above all of the visual noise of the alley,” says Humble. “We [located] the circulation to that side, and have all of our primary openings facing away from the alley toward the tree.”
"For most of us, this is the first home we’ve owned and the first house we built ourselves. These are all floating homes, with specific requirements for materials. It wasn’t easy,” explains resident Wouter Valkenier.
“For me, sustainability is a social aspect of the neighborhood. It was a huge investment of time, but together we helped each other through all the technical innovations. None of us could have done this on our own,
Of the 30 houses, 15 are inhabited by more than one household. One home has three floors, the lowest of which is underwater, with daylight entering through the small rectangular windows above the waterline.
The Buiksloterham area in northern Amsterdam is designated for sustainable building, which made it an appealing location for Schoonschip’s founders. The houses are oriented toward the water and each other, creating a neighborly feel.
The residents decided to build with a limited set of sustainable materials; for the facades, that meant wood, bamboo, or cork.
Residents of Schoonschip, a floating neighborhood in Amsterdam, designed their own houses, working with various architects and contractors. The water in the formerly industrial canal is now clean enough to swim in, but the opposite shore is still a landscape of warehouses.
“Round windows felt like the most obvious choice. They don’t need any kind of lintel—they just work with gravity. The idea of this home as ‘a burrow’ called for a little rounded space to bring the outside in. The architecture enhances the garden, completing it rather than imposing on it.”
Pictured is a rendering of a 570-square-foot 2X lightHouse with a one-bedroom unit stacked atop a two-car garage.
Constructed with sustainably sourced lumber and large, double-pane windows, Studio Shed’s all-season Signature Series units are popularly used as backyard offices.
New entry with easy access for all
This three-bedroom, three-bath home was given a makeover by artist and designer Lindsay Hollinger. The 1,116-square-foot residence sits on a five-acre lot, and the interior is swathed in natural light. While the space is almost entirely updated, there are remnants of the original house—including an original stone wall that stands as a focal point.
AI SpaceFactory entered and won NASA’s competition to design a home for Mars—and now their otherworldly creation is a reality here on earth. Named TERA, the eco-retreat is 3D-printed out of the same biopolymer basalt composite used to create the competition-winning prototype.The plant-based, NASA-tested material has three times the strength of concrete, and can be recycled or resorbed back into the earth at the end of the structure's lifecycle. The install process treads lightly on the surrounding ecosystem—for example, a laser scan of the build site will eliminate the need to level the forest floor.
Black-framed windows and doors tie in with the black metal roof and dark chimney.
The simple structures are a modern play on the traditional cabin with wood-clad exteriors and gabled roofs.
Spurred by the city’s generous ADU incentives and a desire to reduce their environmental footprint, a couple—he an architect and she a construction engineer—designed and built an elegant, 624-square-foot backyard home with sustainability at its core. Scott Mooney and Lauren Shumaker’s compact backyard home is located in the back half of their 5,000-square-foot lot in the Richmond neighborhood of Southeast Portland. The couple plans to track the energy use of their new-build’s electric equipment and appliances. The data will inform the size of their photovoltaic array they'll add to offset the energy costs of the ADU and the bungalow.
The 56-foot home spent three years being used as a trade show prototype by HMK Prefab Homes. The current owners purchased it at the 2014 Dwell on Design conference in Los Angeles.
As backers continue to donate to the project's Indiegogo campaign, additional amenities will be added to the grounds. For the time being, the home will rely on power from the grid.
A stay at TERA plugs visitors into the Hudson River's gorgeous setting. The home's design blends into the region’s landscape.
TERA will be made of a plant-based composite that is recyclable and biodegradable. The structure being built next to the Hudson River is a rehash of the MARSHA Mars prototype.
"The building form was intentionally asymmetric and clad in hand-stained, split-face shakes and metal," says Campos Studio.
Now that the daughter lives just steps away from her mother, Campos says, "The laneway has reunited the family and provided a house that reflects their cultural heritage in a subtle but significant way."
The 200 square foot house takes advantage of a tiny strip of greenery outside the front entry to the home. The sliding glass window allows for interactions with their neighbors and those passing by on the street. The entry to the home is actually off to the side.
The architects inserted skylights in an artful pattern in the rooftop.
At night, the exterior screen provides privacy when the house is illuminated.
Per the Kebony website, their wood products are composed of sustainable softwoods that have been modified with a bio-based liquid to give them the characteristics of hardwoods, making the end result hardy and durable.
The deck of Atelier Victoria Migliore's tree house in France has two swings attached.
The 1000-square-foot ADU is two levels with a footprint that allows the owners to retain plenty of outdoor space for their dogs to play. The façade “is a rain screen system, so the heat gain on the Brazilian hardwood is minimized by being physically separated by an air gap between it and the membrane behind it,” said Knight. “So, the wood heats up when sun hits it and this is not directly translated into the wall on the interior; it is instead buffered by this air gap.” The large doors and second-story skylights then work together to pull a nice breeze through the house.
An exterior view shows how the building wraps around the site’s existing trees.
Stilts elevate the home three to 10 feet above the ground. The firm suspended the building in order to preserve the root systems of the surrounding trees.
The exterior combines recycled brick, radial sawn timber, and galvanized roof sheeting. "Materials were selected to meet the clients’ brief that the house fit within the cognitive idea of an old shed," explain the architects.
The home is located in the desirable Bird Rock neighborhood of La Jolla.
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