This Gorgeous Home Is Pop-Up and Net-Zero, You Can Set It Up in a Day

The surge in popularity of mobile homes, whatever their size, shape, and construction, has encouraged the development of an even smaller segment, that of prefabs. These units are still mobile, though not in the sense that they sit permanently on trailers you can move around when you get the itch for the open road.

A hybrid between a mobile home and a brick-and-mortar construction, a prefab can be packed up for relocation by transport on a flatbed and require little to no land prep ahead of assembly. You can't move with it whenever you feel like it, but you can still move it every once in a while.

Prefabs stay within the compact layouts of tiny homes and other mobile residences, so they bring along reduced monthly costs, a lower carbon footprint, and the promise of intentional living, where you'll get to have a less stressful and more meaningful existence. Perhaps just as importantly, because they're affordable, prefabs are also regarded as solutions to the homeless crisis in many large urban areas. That said, concrete initiatives in this sense from local authorities are still lacking.

The CABN is a good example of all of the above. CABN is a Canadian company founded by serial entrepreneur Jackson Wyatt, now working with the Augusta Township to build a fully off-grid, net-zero, 67-unit CABN Community in Eastern Ontario. The project was announced in May 2023; just recently, CABN unveiled the first display model of the SON.DER cabin, which is just one of the models from their lineup and is described as a unit perfect for families.

CABN approaches home construction from a holistic perspective. A CABN home is the ideal home – at least on paper – in that it's beautiful and functional, sustainable and easy to assemble, welcoming and spacious, despite the compact footprint. It's the home of the future but in more and less direct words.

The SON.DER, for example, offers a dual-level space with one, two, or three bedrooms, a beautiful living room and open-plan kitchen, and an exterior lounge easily created by adding a wraparound deck. The display unit is 750 square feet (70 square meters) of well-lit, airy interiors with double-height ceilings, all the creature comforts of a proper home but none of the carbon footprint of one.

That's because SON.DER is net-zero: fully off-grid if need be, it's built with FSC-Certified cross-laminated timber, renewable cork flooring, and smart technology that allows monitoring and regulation of consumption and waste. The design done in collaboration with B+H Architects integrates low-impact waste and water solutions, and the whole process of building and setting it up requires less than 20% percent of the energy consumption of a typical home. Even site pre-assessment is performed virtually to further reduce the carbon footprint.

CABN talks of biomimicry in the design of each home and, ultimately, of each CABN community they plan to build. That's achieved by setting up each home in accordance with the surrounding environment, from the orientation of the home to the position of overhangs and solar panels, all of which serve to reduce temperature fluctuations throughout the year and, thus, minimize energy consumption. Consume less, pay less. The integration of natural elements and the actual assembly of the house in as less disruptive a manner as possible will "optimize health and happiness," according to the builder.

Then, there's the advantage of a pop-up home. CABN can be assembled within days – a full day for the one-bedroom SON.DER display unit, while the complete setup can take a couple of weeks, depending on factors outside of CABN's reach. Compared to a brick-and-mortar home, that's a fraction of the waiting time at a fraction of the cost – and a fraction of the effort. Plus, you get the instant bonus of owning a durable construction with minimal impact on the environment.

As the display unit shows, the CABN homes are also beautiful, though not in an overdone, over-complicated way. All models, whether one-, two- or three-bedroom variants, feature expansive glazing and lots of neutrals with the occasional pop of color, open-plan spaces, and a decidedly Scandinavian-inspired minimalist design. If these jibe with your idea of downsizing in a prefabricated home, you're welcome.

In addition to the community CABN is working on with Alberta authorities, they're also taking pre-orders for their models. The SON.DER starts at CAD299,000, so roughly US$227,000 at the current exchange rate. It's not "cheap" for a house this small, but it's affordable if you think of it as a permanent home – and even more so as one that will entail drastically smaller costs as time goes by.