These Surprisingly Gorgeous Tiny Homes Are Giving Aging Wind Turbines New Purpose

Source: Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: Jorrit Lousberg/Vattenfall

These wind turbine tiny homes give a whole new meaning to downsizing.

Tiny homes have long served as a source of creative exploration among designers, from ultra-minimal concepts to affordable 3D-printed dwellings and all-electric, battery-powered models. But a Dutch prototype is stretching the bounds of an already innovative market by introducing a completely novel idea: A tiny home made out of an old wind turbine.

The prototype, which features around 387 square feet of interior space, is the product of a collaboration between the European renewable power company Vattenfall and the architecture collective Superuse Studios. It’s currently on public display for the first time at Dutch Design Week, which runs from October 19 to 27.

The turbine-turned-tiny house is also an experiment in material reuse that could become more critical as wind turbines across the globe reach the end of their life cycles.

Extending the life of aging infrastructure

Vattenfall has a few near-future sustainability goals. In 2023, 87% of Vattenfall’s electricity production came from renewable sources. The company aims to close that gap and become fossil-free by 2040, and it’s also thinking about how to make its existing material usage more circular.

One major consideration for the company is its wind turbines, which typically have a lifespan of around 20 years. Once a turbine reaches the end of its utility, Vattenfall has to determine what will be done with its component materials.

That’s a tall order, considering that turbines typically stand at over 300 feet and include a nacelle (the control box that houses the generator, brakes, and other components) as well as three large blades. But the need to address that challenge is climbing. While there are no official decommissioning stats available, Vattenfall estimates that 5,000 wind turbines worldwide will need to be decommissioned annually over the next couple of years, as turbines across the globe begin to age out of their two-decade use window.

On a macro-level, that’s because the first boom of large-scale wind farming infrastructure is reaching the end of its life cycle. While the first electricity-generating wind turbine traces back to the late 19th century, large-scale wind farms have become much more commonplace over the past 30 years or so. In fact, global windpower grew from about 6,100 megawatts to 197,039 megawatts between 1996 and 2010. And that means that now is the time to “find better alternatives of making use of the resources that were developed, and making sure that we get the most out of them,” says Thomas Hjort, Vattenfall’s director of innovation.

“Most parts of a wind turbine—the foundation, tower, gearbox parts and generator—are made of metal or concrete and therefore easily recyclable,” Vattenfall’s website explains. “Steel, for instance, can be melted down and reused, but the downside is that this takes a lot of energy and creates emissions.”

To address this concern, Vattenfall teamed up with the Dutch Design Foundation‘s design lab last year, asking designers in the area to respond to a key question: “What if a decommissioned wind turbine could become a gold mine of resources?” Rotterdam-based Superuse Studios submitted the idea for a tiny home, which ultimately came to fruition.

Turning a turbine into a home

The tiny home prototype is made from the nacelle, or control box, of a V80 2MW model wind turbine that stood on the Austrian Gols wind farm for 20 years. Its decommissioned nacelle is just 33 feet long, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet tall. Nowadays, wind turbines are considerably larger. In fact, Superuse Studios chose one of the smallest available nacelles to prove out its theory that these components could work as viable future tiny homes.

Converting the nacelle into a livable home presented several major design challenges. Before the nacelle could actually be usable, the turbine decommissioning company Business in Wind had to separate it from the rest of the turbine, as well as remove and recycle its interior parts. Then came the question of transport. Due to the size and weight of the boxlike shell, the team needed to find a large enough flatbed truck and manufacturing facility to actually house the project.

Once those details had been arranged, Superuse Studios laid out the interior in order to meet Dutch tiny home design codes, which includes meeting lighting and space benchmarks, and incorporating proper insulation and escape routes in the event of an emergency.

The final design meets all of those qualifications without sacrificing other essentials. Inside the home, viewers will find a fully functioning toilet and shower, a kitchen with a sink and stove, a pullout couch, and an electric heat pump for temperature regulation.

Solar panels on the roof provide extra power, and the home comes with a two-way hookup for electric vehicles, meaning it can either charge the vehicle or use the vehicle’s power inside the home. And light wood paneling adds an aesthetic touch throughout.

The future of the wind turbine tiny home

Right now, the turbine tiny home is a one-off prototype. Vattenfall itself doesn’t have plans to put the homes into production—but Hjort says he hopes the prototype will demonstrate the feasibility of the idea to potential developers.

“It would be possible to do 2,000 tiny houses per year, if you wanted to, on the same template [Superuse Studios created] for the next five years,” Hjort says. “So it’s possible to build a business on doing it. [. . .] Vattenfall is not in the business of developing real estate at this point in time, but we also cannot neglect the obligation we have to push the envelope in all aspects of our life cycle.”

Hjort says that Superuse Studios and its collaboration partners are currently considering larger scale production of the tiny homes, though the idea is still in its early phases. At Dutch Design Week alone, several people have already expressed interest in purchasing a repurposed nacelle for themselves.

“Whether it will fly or not, who knows?” Vattenfall’s Hjort says. “But what we are definitely saying is that it is a real opportunity. There’s interest for it.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Snelling is a contributor for Fast Company with a focus on product design, branding, advertising, art, and all things Gen Z. Her stories have included an exploration into the wacky world of water branding, a chat with Questlove about his creative-centric YouTube series, and a look into Wayfair’s first-ever physical store.