This clever, compact Hawaiian bungalow has a tough side.

When a client asks David Sands to build a bamboo bungalow, it’s a source of joy for him. Sands’ company, Bamboo Living, specializes in housing made from the island’s fastest-growing and most-durable plant. But one request carried more pride than the others. One of Sands’ own employees wanted one of the stylish tiny shacks as a new home to celebrate her return to the Big Island of Hawaii after 12 years on the mainland.

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Sensible design and sustainability combine to revitalize a classic southern N.Y. structure.

When the Black family went searching for a new home, they literally found what they were looking for inside a 1930s farmhouse in rural Katonah, N.Y. There was an old-time charm in the two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath dwelling. But it simply wasn’t big enough to accommodate a family of five.

That’s where, according to homeowner Jason Black, the fun began. “We prepared ourselves for the concept of ‘Tiny House Living,’ as we reduced our family-of-five’s footprint into just a few rooms,” Black says. “But you can’t prepare yourself to do this within the context of an active construction site.”

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Small, straightforward and near net zero, this tiny home easily takes the place of larger living quarters.

Owners of the Strickland Residence in Oak Harbor, Wash., may one day build their oversized dream home. Or maybe not: At the moment, the 784-square-foot, two-bedroom “guest quarters” more than meets their needs.

“The owners are enjoying the smaller home and the relaxed lifestyle that comes with it,” says Ted Clifton, the project’s builder and designer, and president of Clifton View Homes in Coupeville, Wash. “They’re considering not ever building the ‘main house,’ or at most, making it about the same size as this one.”
Number one on the “must-have” list was zero energy performance. For Clifton, that meant including structured insulated panels (SIPs)—Premier Building Systems Neopor 6-1/2-inches thick in the walls, 10-1/4 inches in the roof—for maximum performance. In general, the home was designed with SIPs in mind: The heights of walls, pitch of the roof, and spans of roof SIPs were all optimized for passive solar gains and active PV system exposure, Clifton notes. 

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For this year’s champion project, it’s a case of location, location, location.

By the time Gretchen Rowe decided she wanted a green home, she had all the details worked out. This made building it easier—yet highly challenging, according to designer Jason Offutt of The Shelter Studio in Bend, Ore.

Rowe and her husband, Rodney Toogood, had selected a lot along the Deschutes River as the site of their new home, and had a specific set of parameters in mind for anyone who built the structure.

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This off-grid mountain retreat is designed to sip energy, resist wildfire and return to the forest at the end of its life.

When Andrew Michler began designing his award-winning passive house, he knew he had a tough client: his family. The MARTaK Passive House, located near the one-stoplight town of Masonville, Colo., was to serve as an off-grid family retreat. Consequently, it had to be flexible, accommodating and architecturally interesting, as well as perform in a tough climate.

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