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The Brook Is a Superb Passive House Disguised as a Tiny House With Expandable Roof

Tiny homes have been around since the early 2000s, but never before have they enjoyed the popularity they have today. Boosted by environmental concerns and the travel restrictions brought on by the international health crisis, the tiny home movement is now at its finest.
The Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive home 20 photos
Photo: Small Not Tiny
The Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive homeThe Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive home
With so many models and variations to choose from, it would be easy to assume that there is no more room for innovation when it comes to this particular type of mobile home. Small Not Tiny, a company that builds tiny homes in Australia, is here to show you that you’d be wrong to think that.

Meet The Brook.

The Brook looks like a tiny home but is actually an absolutely gorgeous and very spacious passive house. It is located in Rosebrook, Australia, right next to a river that floods the area during rainy season and then, it becomes a sort of floating home, nearly cut off from the rest of the world on purpose. It’s small enough to be allowed on the highway with additional permits and authorization, but it’s incredibly spacious, almost like a regular but small-size home. That’s because it comes with an expandable roof that adds 10 more square meters (107.6 square feet) to the overall living area. That might not seem much, but for a tiny, it’s incredible space.

The Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive home
Photo: Small Not Tiny
The idea behind The Brook was to show that excessive home design must be rendered obsolete. You can get the same kind of comfort and elegant living in a much smaller footprint, if it’s done right. More importantly, you can lower your overall carbon footprint, and The Brook comes heavily into play here. As a passive house, it incorporates plenty of recycled materials throughout, is relatively affordable and is capable of going off-grid altogether for a number of days.

The Brook offers 27 square meters (291 square feet) of living space on the ground floor, and an additional 10 square meters (107.6 square feet) upstairs. The roof is expandable via telescopic framing: once it’s delivered to your destination, whatever that may be, the frame lifts up and panels of wall fold down into place. The same mechanism is applied to the interior ladder, which goes up into the ceiling to offer more space inside the dinette.

Speaking of space, the video below offers a taste of just how spacious this tiny home feels. There’s an airy living room situated slightly outside of the main floorplan, so if you sit on the couch you almost feel like you’re outside. Access is done through a floating cement staircase (reclaimed), right into the living. Pivoting doors offer the possibility to open the space altogether on hot days, while various louvers offer cross-ventilation.

The kitchen is toward the opposite end, with the dinette serving as division between the cooking area and the living. Unlike with most tinies, the space here feels generously sized, and you get plenty of storage, cooking surface, and room to move around freely. The bathroom is right next door, separated through a sliding door which, when in place to offer privacy, uncovers a secret pantry at the opposite end.

The Brook is a gorgeous Australian tiny designed as an elegant passive home
Photo: Small Not Tiny
The bathroom is lined with bluestone cobbles throughout, and you get a standing shower with more louvers, a dry compost toilet and sink. A separate greywater retention system is in place.

“Designed to live comfortably, sustainably, and wherever you choose to be,” Small Not Tiny says of its tiny houses. The Brook is one such example, and a perfect one, at it: it’s wrapped in timber from felled, old cypress windbreaks that would have been burned, the cobbles are discards, and brass is recycled. Even though it’s made from recycled materials, it still has a very elegant, New York studio slash industrial styling that helps it stand out.

Just as importantly, The Brook is made to go off-grid, if need be. It has solar panels on the roof and a system of batteries and backup generator for that, though the builders don’t go into specifics. It might not be as mobile as other tinies, but it most definitely compensates for it through the focus on sustainability and its striking design.

Pricing for a Small Not Tiny home starts at $2,800AUD per square meter, so that would be some US$2,061 per 10.7 square feet, and would put The Brook at well over $112,000AUD ($US$82,454) without extra options. Customization is possible to your heart’s content – and your budgetary limits, once you decide on a basic plan, with construction time between 8 and 12 weeks.

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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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