Many tiny homes already push the envelope with head-turning looks and creative uses of space.
A collaboration between Vattenfall and design studio Superuse, though, has taken it to a new stratosphere.
Together, they've converted a 20-year-old wind turbine nacelle, the pod-shaped top part, into a fully habitable tiny house, as Interesting Engineering detailed. They put the finished home on display recently at Dutch Design Week 2024.
Equipped with a kitchen, living area, and bathroom, the house measures 13 feet wide, 32 feet long, and 10 feet high. New Atlas noted that, fittingly, the house is powered by green tech, including a heat pump, four solar panels, a solar-powered water boiler, and an EV charging station on the exterior.
The company took on the project to push the boundaries of what could be done with decommissioned turbines.
"We are looking for innovative ways in which you can reuse materials from used turbines as completely as possible," said Thomas Hjort, director of innovation at Vattenfall in a press release.
The company says this particular project addresses some of a turbine's more complicated and polluting recycling processes. Much of the components, like the foundation, tower, gearbox parts, and generator, are easily recyclable, as they are made of steel or metals.
The nacelle shell, made of glass fiber-reinforced plastics, is a greater challenge, per New Atlas.
That prompted Vattenfall, Superuse, and partners Blade-Made and Woodwave to take on what they say is actually the smallest-sized nacelle capable of supporting a code-compliant house. It comes from a two-megawatt turbine from Austria, and the developers intentionally took it on to show that even the smallest nacelles of the era could support ambitious projects.
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Jos de Krieger, a partner at Superuse and Blade-Made, noted there are over 10,000 of this generation of nacelle and said the team's work adds "perspective and a challenge for owners and decommissioners."
"If such a complex structure as a house is possible, then numerous simpler solutions are also feasible and scalable," he added. The company is exploring building floating islands from used turbine blades, for example.
A tiny home does fit the mission perfectly, though. These residences can often fit the passive house standard, offering net-zero living at a fraction of the cost of conventional homes.
The team behind the tiny home is sticking with it as a one-off prototype for now, but Fast Company reported multiple viewers at Dutch Design Week 2024 inquired about purchasing one for themselves.
Hjort told Fast Company that up to 2,000 models could theoretically be built a year, and there is "real interest" in it.
"Whether it will fly or not, who knows?" he said.
Adding to the excitement is that in the coming years, much bigger turbines will be entering the same stage as the one here. With some of the newest turbines coming in at 20 megawatts or larger, one can only imagine what kinds of spaces could be built out of the massive nacelles.
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