#RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS
Harvard student startup lets you test-drive tiny house living for just $99 a night
Moving into a tiny house is a big commitment. Fortunately for prospective micro-home owners, the Harvard University-based startup Getaway will make the decision-making process easier by providing the opportunity to affordably test-drive tiny house living with their student-designed cabins.
Stationed in rural New Hampshire, the 160-square-foot mobile house can be rented for as little as $99 a night and is equipped with a composting toilet, solar electricity, and propane heat.
Created to help grow the Tiny House movement, Getaway is the first project launched by the Millennial Housing Lab, a Harvard Innovation Lab project founded by Harvard MBA student Jon Staff and Harvard Law student Peter Davis. The startup, which just launched this week, built their first tiny home, named Ovida, on a wooded site two hours north of Boston. The timber cabin sleeps up to four and is fully stocked with food, comfy wool blankets, flannel sleeping bags, marshmallow sticks, and more.
“There’s a huge gap between people who post stories to Facebook about living in tiny houses and people who actually live in one,” Davis told Fast Company. “We want to add a rung to the ladder so people can ‘test drive’ a tiny house.” The startup rents the land they build their houses on and splits the profit with the landowner. The Getaway staff plans to build at least three student-designed tiny homes in the short-term and at least 12 more over the next year, with some potentially located across the country. The Ovida tiny house is bookable online and starts at $99 a night.
