01 · Buildings
Niu Haus
A Self-Sufficient Tiny HouseInstitute for Advanced Architecture of CataloniaPhotography: Adrià Goula, Chelsea Sherman
Eighteen square meters, six weeks of design, eight weeks of building — and no connection to any grid.
Niu Haus was the first of the Valldaura cabins: a self-sufficient tiny house designed and built by the 2018–19 MAEBB cohort from timber harvested and processed on the estate. Six weeks of design were followed by eight of fabrication and assembly, producing an off-grid dwelling with its own photovoltaics, water collection and treatment, and an information system monitoring the whole metabolism. It set the pattern every later Valldaura building followed — harvest, mill, prefabricate, measure.
The first Valldaura cabin needed to prove a full cohort could take a dwelling from design to off-grid, livable reality in a single academic term.
An 18 m² tiny house from site-harvested timber, six weeks of design and eight weeks of fabrication, with its own power, water, and monitoring systems.
A completed, occupied off-grid dwelling — the first of what became a series of Valldaura cabins.
Interactive software developed to dynamically optimize embodied carbon during the design process.
Parametric script developed to automate matching a limited selection of shingle sizes to the curvature of the form.
