Presenting the Tiny Office
GreenBy3’s Tiny Office, a project that has been in the works since 2011, was slated to make its debut last Saturday in Hendersonville, SC as part of ECO’s 7th annual Green Homes and Edible Gardens Tour.
Part of GreenBy3’s Tiny Office crew in front of the Tiny Office.
The Tiny Office was first conceived in March of 2011. Inspired by the Tiny Homes movement, it was intended to serve as an educational tool, a satellite office for use at project sites and, in the event of a hurricane evacuation, a business continuity plan. A team of 10 employees, interns and volunteers spent about three years designing and building the Tiny Office. Consistent with GreenBy3’s style, the Tiny Office was built from 95% reclaimed materials. It sits 16′ tall and 8′ wide atop a Bobcat trailer and features a rainwater catchment system, a GreenBy3-built Humanure toilet and foot pump-powered, rain-fed sink and will soon be equipped to run off solar power.
The inside of the Tiny Office, complete with two collapsible workstations, a bookshelf, white boards, a restroom and most importantly, Wi-Fi. The inverted roof directs rain to our water catchment system, which is manually pumped into the restroom sink. The Tiny Office will also be solar powered beginning October, 2014.
The Tiny Office has been a labor of love for GreenBy3, and wasn’t without its share of unique obstacles. In fact, just hours before its maiden voyage we discovered a mechanical issue that made the long haul to the upstate impossible. So we headed to Western North Carolina without the Tiny Office and worked out a backup plan along the way. With help from the wonderful folks at Copy Works in Hendersonville, we were able to print more than one hundred photos, showing the Tiny Office in various stages of construction. The photos were used as a visual display inside Biz611, the building that had provided inspiration for the Tiny Office roof design, which is inverted so as to capture and redirect rainwater for use in the plumbing system.
The GreenBy3 team fields questions from tour-goers
Three laptops looped through slideshows of more Tiny Office photos, including the CAD images of the original designs. In effect, we created a Tiny Office gallery, which was curated by the GreenBy3 team on the day of the tour. The information and visuals generated excitement among tour-goers, many of whom were anxious to see the Tiny Office in-person. We really hoped to show people the feasibility of a “Tiny Life”, and we feel that we were successful in that goal.
Our information booth
The Green Home tour ran smoothly, thanks to ECO’s excellent organization, and was successful, selling over 100 tickets. We are all grateful to have been part of the tour and happy for the opportunity to support ECO, who have been doing great work for 25 years. For those who are interested in seeing the Tiny Office, keep an eye out, it may soon be rolling to a town near you!
