See inside these dreamy tiny houses designed in Alabama (al.com)

By Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com
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on January 27, 2016 at 6:15 AM, updated January 27, 2016 at 4:23 PM

Step inside the artist-in-residence cottages at Serenbe. Tour the two spaces, connected by a wooden deck. And ponder: Could you construct one of these adorable, efficient homes for $20,000?

OK, these exact structures? Not precisely. But that's the challenge Serenbe, a nature-focused community outside Atlanta, is helping Auburn University School of Architecture's Rural Studio examine.

Design-and-build program Rural Studio has a decade of experience creating 20K houses. They're named to indicate the smallest loan a person on Social Security could afford through the Section 502 rural housing loan program, a feature of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Newbern-based program's students have developed 18 prototypes, including one- and two-bedroom homes, and constructed them for clients in Alabama's Hale County. The $20,000 figure is an estimate for labor and materials; the plans could be altered, and cost is subject to the price of land and other variables.

Now Rural Studio is in the process of bringing to market plans that anyone could use to build these homes. Serenbe is the first organization to test the plans.

"They always said they wanted to be in the room but not at the table," says Brandon Hinman, who's the Serenbe artist-in-residence program director and served as project manager. "We gave them full access to any numbers, any city code issues, any snags and questions we would get from licensed general contractors."
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more: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/tiny_houses_become_an_artist_s.html