German Tiny Houses from the ’50s

Dear Lloyd,

I enjoy your books and your blog very much! Thanks for that!

I just found the German book Kleinsthäuser, Ferienhäuser, Bungalows from 1959. I have never heard the term “Kleinsthäuser” which means tiny houses, so I was surprised to see that.

I attach a few pictures because I thought you might find it interesting. The first ones are showing a portable house and the second batch “Heidelberger Wochenendhaus,” i.e., Heidelberger weekend home, shows an interesting tiny house designed by two Germans.

The last picture shows two houses that were built according to a method developed in the USA in which the car is parked under the house, which is on stilts.

Kind regards,
Petra (Hegenbart)

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

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