Small Homes

At a recent conference, international architects explained their ideas for designing and planning compact, shared, and flexible housing to meet the needs of today's households.

Dan Maginn proposes some exercises for visualizing how much room you actually need to live, starting with this equation: too big = not good. Small = good. Too small = suck.

A survey of architects shows that a very low percentage of Americans are still clamoring for McMansions, indicating what may be a broad shift to smaller homes.

Michael Janzen built an 80 sq. ft. house out of stuff he got for free off of Craigslist. He's just one example of people moving into very small homes to reduce their energy use and housing costs.

Smaller, environmentally friendly homes -- ranging from as much as 1000 to as little as 70 square feet -- are a hot trend in modern architecture. Eco-conscious (and wallet-conscious) buyers are increasingly interested in these new "micro mansions".