Long before "tiny home" became a hashtag, British designer and Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud was already living the trend himself. For the 2012 Channel 4 series Man Made Home, which aired from September 23 to October 13, 2012, McCloud set out to build a small, off-grid cabin on a plot of Somerset woodland, using little more than his own trees and other people's leftover materials. According to a Virginia Tech dissertation by researcher Maria Saxton, which surveyed 80 U.S. tiny-home downsizers, participants' ecological footprints fell by an average of 45 percent after the move. That may help explain why McCloud's shed still feels relevant more than a decade later.
A shed built from trees and trash
