Collège Boréal making progress on its northern Ontario tiny home prototype project

A group of four architectural technology students and their teacher will work all summer to finish the design of a tiny home prototype adapted to northern Ontario weather. 

Program coordinator Denis Ouimette says the most important challenge with the build is affordability. 

"We should build a house that is more economical than what exists just by the fact of being smaller," he said. 

He said finding the right building materials is difficult. 

"A third of our research is focused on this," said Ouimette. 

He adds that environmentally conscious materials are also often cheaper in the long run, but are expensive at the onset. 

For example, Ouimette says German-made windows have four times the heat resistance of Canadian windows, but are three times the price.

He says creating local demand for these higher quality windows will help reduce import costs for the required materials.  "If we architects do not ask for a thing, it will never happen," said Ouimette.

To help design the prototype, architectural technology students Josué Nkiosili Kabayo, Salma Bendaoud and Rim El Gouchi use infrared cameras and virtual reality. 

"It really helps you visualize the project in the best way," said Kabayo. 

He adds that, before coming to Canada 10 months ago, he wasn't familiar with tiny houses. 

"I'm used to doing construction with bricks and cement, so doing something with wood fibre, it's really nice," he said. 

For Bendaoud, there is still much to discover about tiny house designs. "Some conceptions are new, because these are the projects of the future," she said. 

She believes that these home designs will become more popular over time. "It's really the price. It makes housing affordable for people with small budgets," she said.