Authors
İlipınar, Damlanur; Yazıcıoğlu, Gülin
Abstract
Over the past decade, tiny houses have become a worldwide phenomenon and introduced as alternative housing to find a sustainable solution for the residential sector. Moreover, these tiny houses are observed to attract huge attention as summerhouses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the investigation of environmental Impacts of tiny houses is important to understand the possibility of effects worldwide. In this research, a tiny house is modeled with approximately 40 m2 as a case study. A tiny house, located in a temperate zone, is created with two different possible structural materials. The first alternative is produced with steel construction while the second one has timber construction. The study aims to (a) quantify the ecological footprint of chosen alternatives in Tally application worked with Revit software, (b) estimate the total cost of two alternatives. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of tiny houses accounts for the full cradle-to-grave processes. The used tools are Revit for 3D modeling, Tally for LCA, and Revit interface for cost estimation. The environmental impact and cost estimation results are cross-compared at the end of the study. The results show the best structural material alternative for an environmental-friendly tiny house solution. Thus, the proposed methodological framework of this study might also be implemented in another ecological design process.