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Resource Furniture sells bookshelves, couches and desks- and a combination of the above- that are so highly engineered that they gracefully transform into beds. Gone is the amusing awkwardness of Murphy Beds, this more modern transforming furniture (much of it designed and made in Italy y Clei) is high style and almost, well, magical. Hydraulics make the transition from bookshelf or couch to bed a smooth and effortless thing to marvel. More info on original story: faircompanies.com

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When Christian Schallert isn't cooking, dressing, sleeping or eating, his 24 square meter (258 square feet) apartment looks like an empty cube. To use a piece of furniture, he has to build it. Located in Barcelona's hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Christian says its design was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home. Spanish-version tour with architect Barbara Appolloni: faircompanies.com Barbara Appolloni's Christian House: www.barbaraappolloni.com Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Steve Jobs called The Whole Earth Catalog "one of the bibles of my generation". He went on to explain in his Stanford commencement speech in 2005, "It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions". The Whole Earth Catalog was a kind of "unofficial handbook of the counterculture". It was, pre-Internet, a way for anyone anywhere to tap into a global economy. Founder and editor Stewart Brand set out to create a catalog- like the then-very-practical-and-universal catalog LL Bean- that would showcase all of the great tools of the world to help anyone do things for themselves or learn about big ideas. Lloyd Kahn was the Shelter editor of the catalog. Kahn, an insurance broker-turned-builder, leveraged his experience with Whole Earth and began to publish his own books. First, he wrote very popular books on dome building. Kahn had become "the spokesman for the counterculture on domes" (his dome home even appeared in Life Magazine), but he took the books out of print when he decided the building style just wasn't practical and "I didn't want any more domes on my kharma". In 1974 Kahn took down his dome and replaced it with a more traditional handmade home. "Built stud-frame house using recycled lumber, doors, windows," he writes in his 2004 book Home Work, "Relief somehow to discover old ways can work best." Today, Lloyd and his wife Lesley Creed run their own homestead in Bolinas <b>...</b>

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Derek "Deek" Diedricksen's backyard is filled with what to the untrained eye might appear children's forts, but these tiny dwellings are actually how he makes his living (mostly). Ask him his job title and he'll reply, "I call myself a tinkerer or I've come up with bizarre-chitect or lark-chitect being kind of a fake architect." Diedricksen's obsession with tiny architecture began unsurprisingly, with the backyard forts of his youth. But he wasn't your average construction-minded kid. At age ten he built his first cabin, complete with electricity, insulation, heat and a platform bunk. When he was 14 he read Lester Walker's book Tiny Houses and discovered there were others out there like him. By the time he stumbled upon the Small House Movement a decade or two later, he had already built dozens of tiny structures. Today, his backyard is filled with tiny cabins, forts, retreats, shelters, shacks and no two are alike. Most of his dwellings are multi-purpose: there's the 20-square-foot travel trailer/emergency homeless shelter (Gottagiddaway), the roughly 6 square foot treehouse/chicken coop (the Wedgie) and the 11-square-foot kiosk/single-sleeper (the Gypsy Junker). He builds small and he works with a micro-budget. His Gottagiddaway AKA "$100 homeless hut" was built for about that (or perhaps as high as $110). His 32-square-foot micro-office (where he filmed his interview) was built for $80 from barn sale/ barn demo materials. His materials are salvaged from old buildings <b>...</b>

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Fifty or sixty years ago, residents of small rural Spanish towns abandoned their centuries-old villages in search of a new type of life in the city. For years, the couple thousand ghost towns of mostly Northern Spain lay empty, but in the early eighties, the migration happened in reverse. Residents of cities began to move back to these abandoned towns to start a new, slower, simpler life. The medieval town of Ibort- 75 miles north of Zaragoza- was "rediscovered" in 1986 when a group of friends, tired of city life, arrived here to start living a slower life in the country. "When they came here, it was to try to return to a type of life closer to nature, closer to certain values that were disappearing from this urban world," explains Ibort resident Ricardo. They began rebuilding the homes in keeping with the traditional stone style, most often with labor-intensive slate roofs included. The new villagers had little homebuilding experience, but everyone had to build- or rebuild- their own home. "I think it's one of the most beautiful things a person can make, "his house," explains Ricardo. "In the past nearly everyone had to do it, to live in a home you built, it's a different experience". Today, Ibort is home to about 60 people. There is still rebuilding going on and there is still space to learn from the past. "Our modern world so accelerated, so much rushing around," says Ricardo. "I think it's necessary to stop a bit this race to who knows where."

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TV producer and Internet-video personality Kirsten Dirksen invites us on her journey into the tiny homes of people searching for simplicity, self-sufficiency, minimalism and happiness by creating shelter in caves, converted garages, trailers, tool sheds, river boats and former pigeon coops....

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By choosing a studio that measures just 12 feet by 7 feet, Felice Cohen can afford to live in Manhattan's Upper West Side where apartments rent for an average of $3600 per month. She pays just over $700 for her 90-square-foot microstudio. After a bit of adjustment she now loves living smaller, simpler and cozier. More on Felice's book: www.whatpapatoldme.com Felice's blog: felicecohen.wordpress.com Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Shipping containers are built to carry huge loads and the refrigerated units are very efficient at climate control. So it's unsurprising that when they're retired from the sea, they're being used as the building blocks for homes and offices. Given their strength they work well in earthquake country. In Berkeley, California architect Karl Wanaselja and his business partner and wife Cate Leger created their home-office using a shipping container. It cost just $1800. Wanaselja and Leger cut their 40 foot long refrigerated unit in half and placed it in a T shape in their backyard (with the help of a crane). They didn't need to add any insulation: they're designed to not have any thermal bridging between the interior and exterior and the polyisocyanurate insulation has the highest R-value of any foam insulation. Using a sawzall (reciprocating saw), the couple cut huge windows into the aluminum/stainless steel structure. Wanaselja says he was initially intimidated by the idea of crafting out of aluminum (the exterior material) and stainless steel (interior), but "once I got over my learning curve I actually like working with metal". In this video, the couple talk about working in a cargo container, using materials like the soy-based plywood floor (Purebond) and the music made by rain and branches on a metal roof. Original story here: www.faircompanies.com

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Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company holds an open house for his newest creation- the 120-square-foot Craftsman style box bungalow. It's a slight step up from the 96-square-foot he just sold, but this one has modular elements so buyers can put the kitchen and bathroom wherever they choose. More info in original story: faircompanies.com

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In 1974, fresh out of the army, Michael Garnier went to rural Oregon to try to make a living off the woods. He tried making furniture, fences, pole barns and selling organic, psychedelic picture propellers (to see Fantasy Flakes), but finally it was a treehouse that got him all the attention. Modeled after the treehouse he had once built for his kids, his first treehouse B&B was completed in 1990. Today he has 9 treehouses for rent, 20 staircases, 5 or 6 bridges, several platforms and zip lines for rapid descent and at least one fireman's pole. Some of his treehouses even have toilets, running water and showers, though he warns guests to "stand when they flush". Over the years, Garnier has become legend in his industry and helped invent a better way to build a treehouse. Instead of bolting wood to wood (ie beams to the tree), Garnier and his colleagues at the World Treehouse Conference (an event he used to host) developed a way to attach steel bolts and cuffs to the tree. Dubbed the Garnier Limb (or GL), this open source design can support 8000 pounds. Garnier sells GLs of all different types as well as plans to build your own treehouse. His DIY treehouses are for 12 foot trees ($150) and he sells about 30 or 40 plans per year. Original story: www.faircompanies.com

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Food Not Lawns founder Heather Flores takes us for a tour of some guerrilla gardens and de-lawned sites in Eugene, Oregon. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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When Pascual Alberola and his partner went looking for a weekend house near their home in Valencia (Spain), they wanted to avoid the built-up Mediterranean coastline. While exploring a sheltered valley just an hour and a half south of their city, they stumbled upon a plot of land on a protected hillside zoned for agricultural use. The land is covered in cherry trees, the views of the Mediterranean are spectacular and neighbors here are sparse, but the largest building they could legally build on their plot was an agricultural tool shed, a "casa de aperros". So they called on architects Enproyecto Arquitectura to create a shelter within the maximum permitted size of 25 square meters (269 square feet) and build them a tool shed as a home. "El refugio en La Vall de Laguar" (the refuge in the Laguar Valley) is arguably one of the most stunning tool sheds ever built, but the small, stone structure doesn't call attention to itself. Its local stone walls- built in the "dry" method (without concrete)- mimic the stone containing walls of the surrounding fields. Most of the windows, except for the large openings providing a view of the sea, are tiny. So from a distance, the home resembles yet another of the boulders dotting the mountainside. Inside, the house takes a more modern turn with all white walls and black-painted steel girders. To maximize space, the architects lofted the bedroom though without using any support columns downstairs, creating the feeling of a "flying bedroom <b>...</b>

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Seven years ago Diana and Michael Lorence moved to a 12-foot-square home without electricity in the coastal mountains of Northern California. They're not back-to-the-land types- they're not growing their own food, nor raising animals-, but, like Thoreau, they were looking for a place where they could get away from the noise of society and focus on their inner lives. For nearly 30 years they have lived in tiny houses, often in guest homes, though their current abode is the smallest and most fitting their needs. It was designed by Michael based on their experiences living in nearly 20 tiny homes across the country before finally settling here. They don't have electricity nor any other type of alternative energy (ie solar power). They don't have a refrigerator so they eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts. There's also no oven, but Diana says she doesn't bake anyway and she cooks their meals with their one cast iron pot over the fire. The fire is also their source of hot water, heat and light (in addition to candles). The Lorences are a private couple, but recently they have begun to speak out more about their lives in hopes of showing others that options such as theirs exist. Until now, the couple has turned down requests appear on video, not wanting to be categorized as simply another couple choosing to live in a tiny space. So I was pleasantly surprised when Diana and Michael agreed to let me visit their home with my camera. Original story here: www <b>...</b>

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Fiver Brown is a musician and the kind of guy who has worked as a rodeo clown and a sushi photographer, so he couldn't really afford to buy a home in his current hometown of Sausalito with an average home price of 2.2 million dollars. So he bought a boat. Technically, he bought a floating home. It's a former WWII lifeboat that had been converted into a small home and docked at one of the town's historic houseboat communities. It's only 13 feet by 37 feet (481 square feet), but the views are unbeatable. He watches stingrays and birds from the galley/kitchen and from his lofted bed he can peer down at his floating neighbors and the hills of Sausalito above. His home is paid off- though he still pays a monthly slip rental as part of the Galilee Harbor Coop- and he's living right where he wants to be, in a town known for its arts scene. He and his band- Fiver Brown and the Good Sinners- perform regular gigs in both Sausalito and across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Fiver also uses his small home as a place to write music and as headquarters for his local label, Floating Records. The docks here have always been a sanctuary: first for refugees of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and later for beatniks and hippies. In 1967 Otis Redding wrote the first verse of "Sitting on The Dock of the Bay" while staying on a floating home here. Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Catalog still lives here on a former tugboat. In this video, Fiver shows us his digs, including a walk-in <b>...</b>

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When Loren Amelang bought some land in the California back country in the 1970s, he had intended to use as a weekend place, but a decade later- tired of the corporate world- he left his Silicon Valley job (he's a pioneer in C++ programming) and moved onto the property full-time. The only real shelter on the property was an old sheep barn, leftover from when the property was homesteaded a century ago. So he decided to build a small shack inside the structure as a home. Inside his 96-square-foot shelter, it was tiny, but very comfortable. A small cast iron stove heated the place in a very short time with very little firewood (chopped tiny to fit the appliance, of course). All of his possessions- books, dishes, condiments, and electronics- were within arms reach. More info in original story: faircompanies.com

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Architects Suzan Wines and Azin Valy were trying to come up with the ideal building material for refugee housing in Kosovo. It should be recycled, recyclable, affordable, plentiful. They thought about bottles and tires. Then Wines tripped over a shipping pallet on the way home from work one night and something clicked. Using only shipping pallets, or skids, the I-Beam architects created a tiny, modular home design. They also created "IKEA-style assembly instructions" so anyone- even those without building experience- could build their own home, using only hand tools (hammer, nails, "a crowbar is helpful"). "We've also used zip ties to build entire structures," adds Wines, "which is pretty quick, cheap and easy and doesn't require any tools". More info & original story: faircompanies.com

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Patrick Kennedy is a housing developer who likes to build small. His vision is to build the housing equivalent of the Smart Car. His SmartSpaces will be small, just a couple hundred square feet. To create a smarter space, Kennedy constructed a 160-square-foot test home (the smallest legal-sized apartment for California) inside a Berkeley wherehouse. SmartSpace 1.0 is filled with innovations like the SmartBench, an adjustable banquette that converts from a dining table to a guest bed. Kennedy gives us an exclusive tour of the tiny SmartSpace 1.0 studio, as well as of his 78-square-foot Airstream travel trailer parked outside (his vacations onboard with wife and child inspired his latest development).

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It's a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that. There are now a few dozen "ecoaldeas" - ecovillages - in Spain, most build from the ashes of former Medieval towns. One of the first towns to be rediscovered was a tiny hamlet in the mountains of northern Navarra. Lakabe was rediscovered in 1980 by a group of people living nearby who had lost their goats and "when they found their goats, they found Lakabe", explains Mauge Cañada, one of the early pioneers in the repopulation of the town. The new inhabitants were all urbanites with no knowledge of country life so no one expected them to stay long. When they first began to rebuild, there was no road up to the town so horses were used to carry construction materials up the mountain. There was no electricity either so they lived with candles and oil lamps. In the early years, they generated income by selling some of their harvest and working odd jobs like using their newfound construction experience to rebuild roofs outside town. Later they rebuilt the village bakery and sold bread to the outside world. Their organic sourdough breads now sell so well that today they can get by without looking for work outside town, but it helps that they keep their costs at a minimum as a way of life. "There's an austerity that's part of the <b>...</b>

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Danny Kim has started his own car company, though, except for the old Land Rover he converted to run on biodiesel, his "cars" all have two wheels. He's patented a couple of electric cargo scooters, one of which folds up entirely to fit in elevators, pickup trucks... your apartment. The vehicle that could put Lit Motors on the map is his C1. Part motorcycle, part car, he calls it a cyclecar. It's two-wheeled and tilts and leans like a motorycle, but it's fully enclosed and steers like a car. And best of all, thanks to gyroscopes, it doesn't fall down. The Lit Motors design house in San Franciso's SOMA is layered with his designs. Kim takes us for a tour of the old warehouse where he parks his biodiesel Land Rover, his patented EV cargo scooters and his cyclecar prototype-in-progress. Original story: faircompanies.com Music credit: Music credit: "Danse Macabre - No Violin" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Bryon Waibel runs what he believes is the world's only urban beekeeping store. It's called Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper and Waibel, who uses the handle 006, does seem to believe that he/ the store/ urban beekeepers are serving a cause. "It would not surprise me at all if the future of the honeybee itself is in urban beekeeping," he says, "It would not surprise me at all." For those not familiar with the problem with bees, the threat is Colony Collapse Disorder: a phenomenon wherehoneybees worldwide are disappearing. No one knows the cause though some point to a combination of pests and environmental pathogens like pesticides and GM crops. The secret of urban bees Waibel thinks the solution could be urban bee hives and he's not alone. French beekeeper's association Unaf found that urban bees are up to four times as productive as their rural cousins because they have a wider variety of plant life for pollination and aren't exposed to pesticides like their country counterparts. It seems the plight of the bees has politicized urban homesteaders to do their part. "Urban beekeeping I would say it's increased at least 3 or 4 fold over the last 3 years." And he says this jump in beekeeping enthusiasm merged neatly with press coverage of Colony Collapse Disorder and increased public perception in the importance of honeybees. Langstroth hives and mead-making goods To arm all these newly recruited urban warriors, Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper sells beekeeping supplies like <b>...</b>

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Full movie here: www.youtube.com I stumbled into the Small House Movement by accident of location- my parents live within miles of the tiny house poster boy Jay Shafer and his 89 square foot home-, but within a couple of years I had become a part of it as one of the few, and perhaps only, videographers documenting small shelters on a regular basis. When I first interviewed Shafer, he was one of just a handful of "Tiny House People" visible to the press. In the past 3 years I've helped turn a handful of inhabitants of small shelters into micro-celebrities (currently, 5 of my tiny home videos have over 1 million views; a couple have more than 3 million). After filming hundreds of hours of tape, I am now telling my version on the tiny house story in the forth-coming documentary We the Tiny House People (Release date: April 23, 2012). I'm reluctant to claim there's some sort of magic in small abodes- I'm sure some people are watching simply for the "house porn" (as Shafer describes it)-, but it's obvious these stripped-down shelters reveal for us the essence of home, and for many, make it a bit easier to "suck the marrow out of life". More info on original story: faircompanies.com Music credits: Opening/closing track by Sivia- siviasivia.tumblr.com Down the Rabbit Hole by Dave Warstler- www.davewarstler.com

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They're just 3 meters (9.8 feet) by 3 meters and just about as high. They'd make great tiny homes, but these portable cube prefabs- they can be moved on a flatbed (in 2 parts) and dropped anywhere with a forklift- are being used across France as rural hotels. Carré d'étoiles translates to "box of stars" and this vacation prefab was designed for stargazing, with a large domed skylight just feet above the lofted bed. It's less than 100 square feet, but it sleeps four (platform and sofa beds) and includes a kitchen with stove, sink and refridgerator, sitting area, a bathroom, a shower, plus storage and shelving. They're not cheap, but the 30900 euro (~$40000) price tag, includes all transport to the site and marketing (since it's assumed they'll be used as vacation rentals). In this video, Caroline of the Carrés d'étoiles de la Paleine, France shows us the three cubes she has installed on the premises of her home/chateau/hotel in the medieval village of Puy-Notre-Dame (in the Loire-Anjou-Touraine regional park). Original story here: www.faircompanies.com

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Most designers begin a remodel by choosing what to trash. Petz Scholtus chose what to collect from the trash to be upcycled (recycled for a higher use). When Scholtus bought her Barcelona apartment in 2006 it had no plumbing nor electricity, though it had some choice trash, like the long piece of glass she stopped her construction crew from throwing away. With two sawhorses (recovered from the street) for legs, it became her dining room table. Other furniture was scavenged directly from the street, like a chair she later covered with old newspapers (mostly from Scholtus' native Luxembourg) and her ubiquitous Bidon lamps made from used jerry cans and a CFL lightbulb. Much of the kitchen furniture- the shelves, island and FSC-certified countertop- was bought from IKEA, though the style-making piece are the cabinets constructed from old wine boxes (some of which Scholtus and her partner drank themselves). More information on apartment: www.pokodesign.com Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Original story here: faircompanies.com In 1996, Barcelona architects Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores were hired to convert an old community laundry into a penthouse. At just 27 square meters (290 square feet), the space was minimal; it was also just a temporary home and the clients wanted a home that was maintenance-free. Prats and Flores (in collaboration with the Mallorcan architectural firm Duch-Pizà) delivered their solution in the form of two suitcases. Their "Casa en una Maleta" (House in a Suitcase) consists of two big trunks in the center of the room which can be opened throughout the day to satisfy daily living needs.

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Sustainable House Sydney produces power, water and even reuses its own sewage, right in the middle of Australia's biggest city. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Johnny Sanphillippo has never made more than $20000 per year (he works as a housekeeper, as well as, a gardener and house painter), but he knew like "any other American" that he wanted to own his own home. When he talked to bankers about qualifying for a home loan, "they look at you and their eyes glaze over and you realize, they're going to give me a lollipop and send me home, which is pretty much what happened". So he decided that if he went far enough away from his hometown of San Francisco he could find something he could afford to buy with cash. He finally heard about a deal in Hawaii (back when oil was cheap and airline tickets were $99 from SFO) and for $3000 cash he bought himself an empty lot in a failed subdivision on the Big Island. Without a loan, he knew he couldn't afford to build a conventional home. He'd always loved tiny houses, but the permitting office wasn't as enthusiastic about allowing him to build small. So he had plans drawn up for a conventionally-sized home, plus a 400 square foot garage. He just built the garage. Once the inspectors signed off on his fully-equipped garage (which included a bathroom, utility sink, electricity, septic system and rainwater capture), he let them know he wasn't planning on building the house. Then he set about swapping the garage door for sliding glass and the utility sink for a regular kitchen. Instead of relying on a loan to buy a house up-front, he had to do it the slow way, in stops and starts as he worked to <b>...</b>

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Teresa Carey lives on her sailboat Daphne with no flush toilet or shower, an icebox for a refrigerator, no television and few electronics. She doesn't see it as a sacrifice, but as an opportunity to live a bigger life unfettered by her possessions. Original story here: faircompanies.com Teresa's blog: sailingsimplicity.com

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An urban homesteader in Berkeley, CA shows us his goats (and chickens and rabbits) and we talk to someone about to buy a backyard goat. Original content here: faircompanies.com

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Jérémie Buchholtz wanted an affordable apartment in Bordeaux (he's a photographer who splits his time between Paris and Bordeaux so his budget was limited), but he wasn't finding anything he liked. Then he stumbled upon a listing for a garage. There was no house, it was just an abandoned garage for sale. And it looked like one. It had big metal doors that blocked out any sunlight and inside it was being used more as a junk room. So Buchholtz called his friend and architect Matthieu de Marien who specializes in converting stores, offices and other spaces into homes. De Marien took one look at the historic street and recognized it as something special. Passage Buhan is a private passageway where the owners each own half of the road so life extends into the street. And the history here is rich: a couple centuries ago, the laneway housed horses and their riders en route to the then city of Bordeaux and the old stable still sits on the street. Buchholtz bought the property and De Marien quickly cut into the old garage to create more light and ventilation. The roof is historic and couldn't be touched so he carved a 12 square meter (129 square foot) patio out of the small space, leaving only 41 square meters of living space (441 square feet). In order to make the space feel larger, De Marien created a "house within a house": one large piece of furniture that includes the bathroom, bedroom, office, closet, a sofa bed and all of the home's storage. With everything contained in <b>...</b>

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Lulu is a single mom who'd gone back to school and didn't have the time or interest in working full-time to pay for rent. So when she had to move out of her more conventional home, she decided to move herself and her daughter into a shipping container. With no building experience, Lulu spent just one month cutting windows and a door and installing insulation and a basic kitchen (complete with propane-powered campstove and on-demand water heater). Then she and her daughter moved into the 8 by 20 foot square foot home, fitting a bed, couch, bookshelf and kitchen cabinets into the 160 square foot box. When Lulu decided they needed a bit more space, she went from shipping to trucking waste and began to build their bedroom on a used flatbed trailer. "It's really mostly built like a shed. It's a nice looking shed, but it's really an 8 by 16 shed with windows in it." Using only recycled building materials- including used floorboards, windows, cabinets, doors, bathtub, toilet and sinks- she built the entire thing for about $4000 (trailer included). Original story here: www.faircompanies.com Music credit: "I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor" by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com

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When Carlos Alonso and his sister Camino (partners at Madrid architecture firm Ábaton) were looking for a country home for their extended family, they stumbled upon an abandoned stable in rural Extremadura, Spain and recognized it as a special place. High on a hill and far from city water or an electrical grid, the crumbling cow shed was far from the conventional image of luxury estate, but Carlos and Camino could envision a transformation. This part of the province of Cáceres (near the Portuguese border) has been home to generations of cattle ranchers and the Alonsos recognized the wisdom those who came before them. Building on the instinctual knowledge of the ranchers before them, the Alonsos preserved much of the old stable. The old watering trough became a fountain and interior patio where water now helps cool the home in summer. The hay loft above became bedrooms. The facade is still the original stone, though given the homes crumbling state, they were forced to add cement behind it. Without access to the grid, the Alonsos added photovoltaics and hydro power and worked to ensure the home wouldn't use much energy. The original position of the stable worked to their favor. The southern exposure allows for the sun to be the main source of heat during the winter. The Alonsos also added large wooden shutters that slide closed like a second skin, covering the large windows at night to trap in most of the home's daily solar heat gain. The home was located far from city <b>...</b>

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Cuando Christian Schallert no se está vistiendo, cocinando, durmiendo o comiendo, su diminuto apartamento loft de 24 metros cuadrados en Barcelona se convierte en un cubo vacío. El apartamento se adapta a las necesidades de Schallert en cada momento, sin que por ello el espacio sea permanente ocupado por una cama, una gran mesa, o la cocina. Diseñado por Barbara Appolloni: www.barbaraappolloni.com Reportaje original aquí: faircompanies.com

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faircompanies.com's Kirsten Dirksen steps into SuChin Pak's bathroom to check for parabens, phthalates and all those nasty chemicals lurking in personal care products.

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When architect Karl Wanaselja built his home in Berkeley, California the junkyard became his urban forest for materials. For months he visited one of three local yards looking for car roofs and Dodge Caravan side windows. The windows became awnings and the roofs became siding for the top floor of his home. Wanaselja designed the home with his partner (in business and life) Cate Leger. They liked the look of the old cars, but they also believe firmly that reusing trumps recycling. They reused more than just cars to build their home. The lower half is sided in poplar bark, a waste product of the North Caroline furniture industry. Exterior wood is salvaged redwood and the fences and windowsills are on their second life. Because they wanted to blend into the neighborhood as much as possible, Wanaselja and Leger played with perspective to create a home that looks small on the outside, but feels big on the inside. The home is only 14 feet wide on the ends, and it pitches forward and pinches in at the ends so from the street the home looks small. And it is just 1140 square feet- more than half the US average- and only 700 square feet on the ground floor. "It's kind of like Dr. Who's TARDIS. He's got this little phone booth, he goes in and then it's a giant space inside so it's kind of." In this video, Wanaselja and Leger give us a tour of their home, their car part shed and their shipping container architecture studio in the backyard.

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Country caravans, or according to those at Roulotte de Campagne, "Bohemian-style caravans" are back in style. "There's a fresh craze for these quaint mobile homes," declare the designers. Roulotte de Campagne has redesigned the circus caravan, country caravan or so-called gypsy caravan as a high-comfort way for city-dwellers to get away from it all and tap into their Bohemian spirit. "'Roulotte' gypsy caravans," they say, "epitomize freedom and the great outdoors". They can be rented in 80 locations across France for about 70 to 95 euros per night or bought for 33900 euros (this includes help marketing them as a B&B). Caroline of Hôtel Chai de la Paleine added one to the grounds of her home/chateau/hotel in the medieval village of Puy-Notre-Dame (in the Loire-Anjou-Touraine regional park). She rents it by the night alongside her 3 Carré d'étoile cube shelters made by the same designers (who also created the tiny pod dwellings, Le Pod). Original story here: www.faircompanies.com

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Founder of the Tiny Tumbleweed House Company, Jay Shafer, explains how his small home keeps him happier and how his lifestyle differs from Thoreau's 19th century simple life.

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Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company gives us a tour of his 89-square-foot home on wheels parked in Sebastapol, California. He sells plans for the Epu model for $859. Ready made: $45997 Build it yourself: $19950 Original story here: faircompanies.com

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In a town where the median home price is over half a million dollars, Jenine Alexander decided to build her own. Using resources like the tiny house blogs and the 1950 bestselling DIY book "Your Dream Home: How to Build It for Less Than $3500" (a gift from a friend), Jenine spent less than $3500 on her home. In fact, she used nearly only materials recovered from the dump or found on craigslist and the only things she paid for were a used trailer and fasteners (nails, screws, hinges, etc). She built it on wheels not just to get around minimum size standards, but mostly because she couldn't afford land in her hometown of Healdsburg, California. More info in original story: faircompanies.com

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How to make a homemade fly trap and how to ID the good bugs for your worm bin with Bentley of Red Worm Composting. Link to original article: faircompanies.com

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It's one of the most expansive and one of the most complex living roofs ever designed- the 197000-square-foot rooftop is home to 1.7 million native plants-, but the crown on architect Renzo Piano's California Academy of Sciences is more than simply a home for native plant species. It's also an integral part of the smart building design. Up here there are weather stations that report on wind, rain and temperature changes to a central computer. This feedback is used to open and shut the roof's skylights to create automated passive ventilation. In other words, this smart system means the building doesn't need air conditioning. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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The designers behind Timtimxtimtim saw the short life of a chopstick as a reason to build a bookshelf. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Michael Garnier has helped pioneer the craft of modern treehouse construction. His Garnier limb -invented in collaboration with other enthusiasts as an open source project- holds up to 8000 pounds and allows treehouse builders to create stronger, more durable dwellings in the trees. When Garnier, who owns a treehouse resort with 9 elevated dwellings, decided to build his own home for himself and his wife Peggy, it had to also be nestled in the branches. While his B&B cabins in the air are closer to 100 square feet, for his own home he decided to go big. His home is 1800 square feet on three floors. He calls it the world's largest treehouse (not a fact, though he challenges anyone to prove him wrong). He selected a spot in the middle of a grove of White Oak trees and used 7 trees to support the weight of his home (the largest one in the middle of the home is no longer living, but he manufactured a root system for it so it would still support the weight of a living tree). In this video, Garnier takes us for a tour of his "trees house" and explains how a home like his does less damage to the grove of trees than if he'd built a conventional house there. Original story: www.faircompanies.com

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It used to be the way we made or preserved much of our food- cheese, wine, yogurt, sourdough bread, soda and pickled vegetables. For Alex Hozven food is either living or dead. At her Cultured Pickle Shop in Berkeley, California, she tends 20000 pounds of vegetables that "breathe" carbon dioxide. She's simply pickling vegetables, but to most of us used to "dead food", it's a foreign concept. For four millenia, fermented foods were part of every culture's diet- eg sauerkraut, kimchi, pickled herring, giardiniera, miso, kombucha, kefir-, but today with our modern industrial food system, even our "pickles" aren't usually pickled, but are simply cucumbers soaked in vinegar and heat-treated to kill any pathogens. Even our sauerkraut is pasteurized. Instead of using the modern shortcut (vinegar and pasteurization), Hozven pickles her vegetables (cabbages, carrots, radish, beets, etc) relying on the slower method of fermentation. Pickled vegetables may pack more vitamins than the plant pre-fermentation (Korean research points to high doses of vitamin B). The probiotics in fermented foods have been credited with being antioxidants, immunity-boosters and anti-inflammatories. While Hozven warns against treating these foods as medicine, she says there's no doubt they're good for your gut. Perhaps the most fun part of fermentation are cultured soft drinks. The earliest sodas used fermented vegetables for the fizz. Even as recently as a century or two, it wasn't so uncommon to drink a <b>...</b>

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When asked to name the worst part of our day by happiness researchers, we consistently name commuting as at least one of our least favorite activities. And yet, many of us choose long commutes. Why? Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer call it the "Commuters Paradox" and claim that we fall into this trap because we underestimate the pain of long commutes when making decisions about where to live. I take you along for my commute, the 5-minute walk to my daughter's school by stroller through Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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Except for notions (buttons, zippers, etc), everything in Rebecca Burgess' wardrobe has been grown and designed within 150 miles of her home. But until putting her closet on a diet one year ago, nearly all her clothing was produced far from home, and that made her a very typical American. Over the past half century the US textile industry has been decimated. "In 1965, 95% of the clothing in a typical American's closet was made in America," Burgess writes on her blog, "today less than 5% of our clothes are made here." Upset by the outsourcing of the American wardrobe, as well as the disconnect this by the waste produced by the textile industry worldwide (it's the #1 polluter of fresh water on the planet and America's 5th largest polluting industry), Burgess decided she needed to focus public attention on local fabric, in the same way the food movement had done with local food. Inspired by the success of challenges like the 100 Mile Diet, Burgess decided to put her closet on a diet. For six weeks she wore one outfit (created from local rancher Sally Fox's color-grown cotton that Fox had milled back in 1983 before the area lost all of its mills), but then local designers, in collaboration with local farmers, began creating more hand spun/knitted/dyed pieces until her wardrobe had become so complete she even had a naturally-wicking alpaca raincoat. Rebecca calls her experiment the Fibershed Project, because like a foodshed or watershed, her fibershed- the 150 mile radius of <b>...</b>

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So you've seen An Inconvenient Truth, what next? If you're still not familiar with urbanite, waterless urinals, Slow Food, building integrated photovoltaics, vermiculture, shade grown principles, recycled underwear, organic sucanat, soda bottle jackets, the power of hemp or pot caught fish, welcome to faircompanies.

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It's easy to assume once you have a couple of kids, your days of freewheeling are numbered, but the Dutch have a cyclist's answer to the minivan. It's called a "bakfiets", a cargobike that resembles a rideable wheelbarrow. In this video, we join the owners of Seattle's Dutch Bike Company on a ride with kids in tow and faircompanies' Kirsten Dirksen takes it for a test ride (without kids, since it's a bit of a boat to get used to).

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If you're trying to eat more probiotic or fermented foods, you've probably been turned on to sauerkraut. Since many commercial brands are pasteurized or not actually fermented, the best way to ensure that your kraut is swimming with microorganisms is to make your own. Here faircompanies' Kirsten Dirksen lets hers ferments 10 days in her mother's crock pot. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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faircompanies' Kirsten Dirksen and family examined our mania for lawns as well as alternative natural landscapes and nitrogen-fixing lupines. Original story here: faircompanies.com

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When you have a child, or two, it's time to reconfigure your bike a bit. faircompanies' Kirsten Dirksen takes a pregnant ride with baby #1, scouting options for a bike for 3.

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