These small houses in Omaha reimagine the starter home

On the corner of a tree-lined street in northeast Omaha, Nebraska, two modern and minimalist residences are resetting the standard of what a new house should look like. Their bold orange and navy blue exteriors and spare, geometric forms set them apart from the more conventional gabled houses down the street. The biggest difference, though, is their size. At just 802 and 618 square feet, the two houses are significantly smaller than the average new American home, which has a median area of more than 2,100 square feet. The houses are the first two iterations of OurStory, a housing system envisioned as a replicable, accessible, and above all affordable approach to building homes. Using hyper-efficient spatial layouts and quickly manufactured prefab parts, the houses are designed to be built fast and inexpensively for anything from an age-in-place forever home to a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU) to a remarkably enticing option for a first-time homebuyer. They’re resetting th