East Nashville's eco-friendly Little Green House

Four other spaces:

Amid all the bungalows, cottages and ranch houses of East Nashville stands an arrestingly atypical structure at the corner of South 15th Street and Shelby Avenue. Called the Little Green House, the 1,100-square-foot building features a sloped tin roof with charred-oak siding. A small wooden walkway spans what looks like a dry riverbed in its mulch yard.

Initially built as a spec home, the Little Green House was the brainchild of Ryan Nichols of Green Home, realized by Rachel and Edward Martin of (n)habit Design and Interiors, Jeff Middlebrooks of Nashville Home Energy Solutions and Nichols himself. From top to bottom, the two-bedroom, 1.5-bath house is an energy-efficient and uniquely designed structure. Native plants grow in the front yard, which is watered by rain collected on the property. The placement of trees on the lot and the building's windows maximizes winter sunlight, heating the home through passive solar energy. When artificial heating or cooling is needed, there's a small, efficient HVAC system.

Jake and Hana Elliott — a striking young couple with an equally fetching pit-bull mix named Jayli — purchased and moved into the Little Green House earlier this year. He's a hydrologist for the Army Corps of Engineers and a carpenter in his spare time, and she's a product developer at Emma, the email-marketing company known for being one of the more enviable places to work in town.

"One thing we love about this house and about Ryan, the builder, and his development company, is that they're really focused on living the right way and living the right size," says Hana.

"He doesn't do this for the money at all," Jake adds. "I mean, I think he could've made a lot of money off this lot and stuff, but his dream is that all houses would be just kind of what you need. You don't need the monster houses — he doesn't see the need for that."

"Obviously it looks different," says Nichols of the house. He's a frequent traveler who gets many of his ideas from seeing how structures in different parts of the world are built. Incidentally, the Scene had to speak with Nichols via email, because — as of press time — he's on a monthlong climbing expedition in the Himalayas and couldn't speak via phone.

"The aesthetics of the house were important to us, although we wanted spaces that functioned first and foremost," he wrote. "Aside from that, quality of construction and cutting-edge technology were paramount. The house achieved LEED Platinum certification, which is honestly a big deal for a spec home."

Nichols started the company Green Home in 2007 with his friend and fellow Nashville native John Price. Price, whom Nichols credits as having "much more of an entrepreneurial spirit than I did," died unexpectedly in 2010. But Green Home soldiered on, with Nichols collaborating as designer on custom houses throughout the Nashville area.

"We had a shared passion for the smaller, higher-quality house concept versus what we felt were large, generic and low-quality houses being built around town," says Nichols of his collaborators on the Little Green House. He's very careful to give credit where it's due, emphasizing the roles Middlebrooks and the Martins had in creating the home: "We all brought different strengths to the table and felt like if we pooled our resources — both financial and knowledge-based — we could put together something kinda cool.

"We tend to follow a pretty cookie-cutter construction model in the South," he continues. "It's a traditional culture and tends to be slow to change. Nashville is seeing a lot of outside influence right now, and it is a great time to be pushing new ideas."

Nichols, who lives almost literally in the Little Green House's backyard, just down the hill from the property, has plans for a handful of other houses he describes as "art projects of sorts" right next door. Well, when he's back from his next adventure, that is — climbing in Patagonia.

"Man, he's like the Dos Equis Man," says homeowner Jake. "The Most Interesting Man on Earth."

As for all the attention the Little Green House gets — from passers-by stopping in to ask questions to local reporters poking around — do the Elliotts mind? It doesn't seem that way.

"It's cool getting to highlight some of the stuff that Ryan and Rachel and Jeff have been doing with this house," says Hana, "just 'cause we believe that it's the right way to live."