Design Tiny Homes The Latest in Prefab Wood Tiny Houses Is a Hexagonal Shrine to BBQ By Lloyd Alter Design Editor University of Toronto Lloyd Alter is Design Editor for Treehugger and teaches Sustainable Design at Ryerson University in Toronto. our editorial process Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Lloyd Alter Updated October 11, 2018 Maple Leaf BBQ huts Share Twitter Pinterest Email Design Tiny Homes Architecture Interior Design Green Design Urban Design Avert your eyes, vegans, as we show a uni-tasking building that celebrates meat. Avert your eyes, dear vegan readers, as we cover the latest trend in tiny houses, wood construction, and prefabrication: the Finnish grillkota or barbecue hut. Yes, it is an entire building devoted to the single function of grilling meat and now prefabbed in Canada. Made out of pine, they are 10 or 12-foot hexagons lined with a bench with a charcoal grill in the middle. Maple Leaf BBQ Hut describes their history: Cutaway of BBQ hut at Cottage Life Show in Toronto. Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0 Originally called a goahti, the first kota huts were used as temporary dwellings by the indigenous Sami people. Having lived in northern Europe for thousands of years, they inhabited sectors of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Koala Peninsula.... A kota traditionally had an inner framework of four poles, curved at one end, with a straight horizontal pole in the center for support. Approximately a dozen straight wall poles of various sizes surrounded the structure. When set up, a kota stood on four support legs, and was approximately five to eight feet tall. Sami family in front of goahti, about 1900. Library of Congress via Wikipedia/CC BY 2.0 Interestingly, those traditional goahti buildings were actually portable, and according to Wikipedia, "Traditionally, the Sami transported the whole disassembled structure by having their domesticated reindeer being used as a pack animal to carry or drag the poles while following their reindeer herd." Today we have SUVs and pickup trucks to haul them around, yet the goahti has evolved into a permanent structure. das.steda-online I was, frankly, shocked to find that such a building existed but they are apparently quite common, with many Pinterest pages devoted to them. Some of them get quite elaborate and come complete with furs on the benches to totally alienate the vegetarians. A ten-foot hut from Maple Leaf BBQ costs C$10,300, or US$8,008 today before trade wars crash the US dollar, so you'd better hurry if you want your own uni-tasking building devoted to the worship of meat.