I’ve seen the tiny house thrive in 2011 like none other.  People behind these structures — whether a tiny home, shed, backyard office, ADU, or off-season retreat — seem to have a little Thoreau inside.  Nonetheless, please keep this in mind: only about 5% of the population would ever dream to live in a tiny house.  Is this for you?  Here’s a little round up of the built projects that we covered in 2011, in no particular order.  Click the text below for more and use your tabs for hours of reading.

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Happy holidays and all the best from Jetson Green! As always, I hope you’ll stay healthy, keep warm, and enjoy family. We’re going to publish some year-end coverage over the next week that will be great. And we’ll take a look forward. It’s been a fun year and the next will be just as great.  In the mean time, if you have a green home or bathroom/kitchen project, submit it for possible publication.

For your Friday viewing, check out what California architects Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger used to make a backyard office.  They split a 40-foot, refrigerated shipping container and placed the two parts in a T shape with a crane.  Then they cut windows into the ends and covered the floor with soy-based, formaldehyde-free Purebond.  And the container only set them back $1800.

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SUNY’s Centennial Hall, a student dorm completed this summer, has earned LEED Gold certification, according to gbNYC, making it one of the largest modular construction projects in the state of New York.  It’s not the only modular student building — The Modules is but another modular project on my mind — though The Centennial showcases what’s good about off-site construction with a total of about 184 wood modules.

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A while back, I mentioned The Crib, an “enviresponsible shelter” by Broadhurst Architects that can be used as a weekend cabin, backyard office, exercise studio, or guest house — you name it.  Well it’s time for a short update from our last article, if you haven’t already noticed, that a 250 square-foot Crib was built on the grounds of the Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland.  It’s being used as a visual arts studio, a lab, and a gallery and is open to visitors during certain events and various other times.

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