Not-So-Tiny 90 Day House

The 90 Day House was one of three project invited for a special presentation at Innovation ACT in Canberra last Wednesday. The prototype house is available on AirB&B as "Tiny House with Loft, O'Connor, ACT, Australia". It is just a few streets from where I live, so I walked over to the open day on Sunday.

This is a polystyrene core plywood wall construction building which is almost a cube. The emphasis is on ease of construction by DIYers. There is maximum use of standard size sheets of plywood, so there is the minimum of cutting and wastage.

The resulting building looks backyard shed, which may not appeal to everyone's taste, but acts as a 3D instruction manual. You can look at the building, see all the fixings, how it is put together and think "Yes, I could do that". The final result could be prettied up with some paint and cover-strips.

This building looks much like those from the Tiny House / Small House Movement, but is not intended to be mobile.

Vancouver had a  Tiny House Building Workshop Series in 2014 (when I was visiting for a conference) but that is now over. Perhaps what might suit Australia is a blended Vocational Education and Training (VET) course. The idea would be that you would study some theory on-line and then get some practical experience helping build someone else's house. You would then be qualified to build your own and show others how to do it.

Apart from regulations about building, there are legal issues with what land you can put such a home on. The Co-housing Handbook discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls with community construction, but like most such Cohousing Handbooks, is from a US perspective.