There\u2019s nothing trashy about Gregory Kloehn\u2019s Brooklyn pied-a-terre: a live-in dumpster that sleeps two with ease, hosts impromptu barbecue parties and sports its own sundeck.
\nIt\u2019s the California artist\u2019s tin-can contribution to the tiny-house movement that\u2019s prompting many Americans to ask if bigger really is better when it comes to having a roof over your head.
\n\u201cOn the street, when it\u2019s all closed up, if you don\u2019t know about it, you think it\u2019s a garbage can,\u201d said Kloehn, 42, as he invited AFP to step inside for a house tour.
\n\u201cThey don\u2019t know I\u2019m in here sleeping… Even with the barbecue going outside, chicken wings grilling, people just walk by. They don\u2019t see it as a home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kloehn had already turned 20-ft shipping containers into housing units when he thought up the idea of doing likewise with the steel garbage receptacle known to Britons as a skip.
\n\u201cWhat I did is that I bought a brand new dumpster and just started going to town,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cI was going to make it a little rougher at first, but then I started and I thought, \u2018Let\u2019s put in some granite counter tops. Let\u2019s put in some hardwood floors. Let\u2019s really make it luxurious and liveable – really take everything a regular home has and throw it into this small a space.\u201d
\nYou enter Kloehn\u2019s dark-green crash pad – his home back in Oakland is rather more conventional – through a Dutch door with an affixed minibar that is well-stocked with whiskey and vodka.<\/p>\n
To the right is the galley-style kitchen with smooth granite countertop, sink, single-burner gas stove, concealed icebox and a hood fashioned out of an old wok.
\nRunning around the edge is a cushioned sofa, upholstered in black vinyl, with backs and seats that lift off to reveal storage space and a marine toilet connectable to a city sewage system.
\nThere\u2019s definitely no room to swing a cat, but twist a crank and up goes the ceiling to reveal a pair of eyebrow windows to provide natural light and some welcome headroom.
\nWelded onto the exterior is a shower and the gas barbecue. Electricity comes from whatever socket happens to be nearby – what Kloehn calls \u201cliving off somebody else\u2019s grid.\u201d
\nA descendant of Civil War president Abraham Lincoln who, according to legend, grew up in a log cabin, Kloehn paid about $1,000 for the dumpster, known in the trash business as a six-yard humpback.
\nHe spent another couple of thousand on fittings and insulation – about as much as one month\u2019s rent for a cramped Manhattan studio.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s actually kind of neat, considering what he built it out of,\u201d said Ryan Mitchell, who blogs about tiny-house design and construction at www.thetinylife.com.
\nIn a nation where the average home is 2,600 sq ft (241 sq m), tiny houses – typically 186 sq ft, but going up to 400 sq ft – are fetching more attention, not least from ageing baby boomers looking to downsize in their retirement years.
\n\u201cThere are more builders. There are more people seeking to live in tiny houses,\u201d Mitchell told AFP by telephone from North Carolina, where he is completing his own diminutive dwelling.
\nThere would be even more tiny homes, he said, if if local zoning regulations and housing codes were not so restrictive.
\nIn a back alley in Washington, a four-unit tiny-house community has taken root at Boneyard Studios (www.boneyardstudios.com), showcasing the possibilities of small-is-beautiful housing in the heart of the nation\u2019s capital.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not for everyone by any means,\u201d said Jay Austin, whose 140-sq ft home at Boneyard Studios, the Matchbox, is totally off-grid, self-sustaining and carbon-neutral.
\nIn New York, the city\u2019s museum is showing off a 325 sq ft micro-apartment boasting all the features of a unit twice its size – and it\u2019s invited a lucky few to try it out for size by spending the night in it.
\n\u201cI actually could see myself living here,\u201d museum intern Taylor Jones told the New York Times after a sleepover this week, although she worried how cluttered such a compact space could become.
\nNot content with making a dumpster just for himself, Kloehn has used found materials – a fridge door here, some castaway lumber there, topped with a fiberglass hood from a pickup truck – to create a \u201cdebris home\u201d on wheels for the homeless. He\u2019s also tinkered with barbecue and salad bars on bicycle frames, documenting them on his www.gregorykloehn.com blog.<\/p>\n
Source: Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s nothing trashy about Gregory Kloehn\u2019s Brooklyn pied-a-terre: a live-in dumpster that sleeps two with ease, hosts impromptu barbecue parties and sports its own sundeck.
\nIt\u2019s the California artist\u2019s tin-can contribution to the tiny-house movement that\u2019s prompting many Americans to ask if bigger really is better when it comes to having a roof over your head.
\n\u201cOn the street, when it\u2019s all closed up, if you don\u2019t know about it, you think it\u2019s a garbage can,\u201d said Kloehn, 42, as he invited AFP to step inside for a house tour. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}