Oh, man.

Lloyd Kahn featured a mention of a house designed by the Rural Studio at Auburn University on his blog this morning that could be built for 20,000 dollars.

Beautiful!

You can see his post here.

Rural Studios website is here…. www.ruralstudio.org .

Good design….with creative use of materials!!

That’s the secret….aesthetics with concern for economy trumps stupidity and deep pockets any day!

Check out the Rural Studio project….it’s pretty amazing.

A short PS…..man. I didn’t read the article that accompanied Lloyd’s post. Check out this quote from the article….it filled in some of the questions of “why can’t I figure out a way to do what these folks are doing?”

And $20,000 is still an aspiration. These two cottages and the deck between them cost $135,000 to build. Smith is hoping that if a contractor understands process, he can bring it in more cheaply. Smith will be able to test that hypothesis: Nygren is invested in the collaboration and the concept. He intends to build more cottages and will be raising funds to do so. He says,

“Small houses can live large and affordable housing can have and should have thoughtful design.”

Gads.

I guess that even with good design…or even without it….I could build something pretty darn impressive for 135,000. What the heck?