Tour this Estonian tiny house with large ambitions

Tiny houses and cabins within the wild, like Golden Home, come shut as much as the weather, however in rural Estonia no less than, they’re usually darkish with home windows too small for a correct nature watch. To this finish, brothers and ÖÖD founders Jaak and Andreas Tiik began making minimal, mirrored variations with floor-to-ceiling home windows and putting them subsequent to hanging magnificence spots throughout their homeland.

Discover the ÖÖD’s Golden Home

Almost a decade on, ÖÖD has equipped motels, distilleries and personal estates in 25 international locations with mirrored homes, saunas and places of work. From the 9.36 sq m glamping cabin proper as much as the 26.3 sq m restricted version Golden Home (with gold mirrored glass), every may be customised however comes with air-con and heating, a micro kitchen, a bathe, a double mattress and an out of doors terrace. The Golden Home was designed in collaboration with British designers Buster + Punch and options leather-based, marble and brass fixtures and fittings. Like all different homes, it affords self-check-in, is free from single-use plastics, TVs and WiFi and may be off-grid relying on native, site-specific options.

Winters in Estonia usually attain -10oC, and the Tiik brothers learn about constructing in harsh climates. On the ÖÖD headquarters in Tartu, (this 12 months’s European Capital of Tradition) new designs are being developed, destined for Iceland. They may type the ÖÖD Hekla Horizon, a cluster of 9 homes opening close to the Hekla volcano in early 2025. Designed as a ‘Northern Lights lodge’, company can view the auroras from their beds, scorching tubs, and an all-glass Northern Lights Lounge.

Together with excessive climate, the cabins must embrace wildlife, amongst them creatures of the forest who don’t know they’re there. This 12 months, company at a mirrored cabin in Quebec loved the corporate of a pack of wolves and in Estonia, reindeer and crows (the latter are drawn to their reflections) pop by. Birds would possibly fly into mirrored surfaces, and such is the enterprise’s concern over their welfare that every ÖÖD home comes with UV movie stickers that birds, however not people, can see.

Our fascination with reflective homes by no means wanes; American artists Doug Aitken and Philip Okay. Smith III each constructed mirrored homes within the Californian desert that went viral on social media and The Invisible Home, a mirrored mansion constructed by film mogul Chris Hanley in Joshua Tree is available on the market for $18m. ÖÖD homes price a snip of the worth. Even so, every atmosphere has its calls for. ‘The most important lesson we’ve got discovered?’ says Andreas Tiik. ‘By no means underestimate the facility of nature and the particular challenges it presents.’