Crazy Cabin

This photo of the crazy cabin that I was at this weekend doesn’t do the building (or the builder) justice. It’s crazy — and inspiring. It was designed and built by one of the guys at Jenn’s office. What you can’t see in the photo is the roof (it’s a three story with probably twelve different sections of roof fanning out from a central point at the top centre of the bulding. The owner/builder took those of us who wanted out onto the roof and I laid down with my head poking out from the top most part looking down along the central beam and it looked great. As well, when you stand up on the tip top part of the roof you’re just about level with the top of the forest and you can see all around.

This plan of the first floor kind of gives you an idea of the concept for the house. In the center of the main spiral staircase is the central beam that travels up fourty feet to the roof and serves as the axis for the whole place. Each floor has the sections of the pie divided up differently and sticking out at differing lengths. The second floor is mostly open to below and has two bridges, one that crosses the living room to the master bedroom and another on the outside that joins two decks together.

On the third-ish floor there’s an office-library-tower place that looks out over the whole property. It’s also where you can get onto the roof if you pop out a window. There are three scale mockups for the cabing up there. This is a photo of the smaller support structure, there is another at a larger scale and the third is an outside wall and roof shape model.

It was quite incredible to hang out there. Oh, and there’s a small solar panal on the roof about a square metre in size that powers the place. It’s not hooked up to the grid so that’s all he has for electricity. We had a big storm around supper time and the lights ran well off the power stored in the battery from the solar cell. The cabin is heated by a wood stove. There is no plumbing.