Convinced you couldn't live in a tiny house? A new modernist box, perched on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior in Bayfield, Wis., is such an exquisite miniature that you might think twice.

Architect Bill Yudchitz used simple lines and building materials such as Baltic birch plywood to create the stylish yet ultra-efficient E.D.G.E. (Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment), which won an Honor Award this year from the American Institute of Architects or AIA Wisconsin.

His modular design, chosen as "This Week's Green House," was originally built to challenge the notion that "bigger is always better." It has 320 square feet of well-crafted space on the first floor, plus two 80-square-foot balconies for sleeping.

"It is more akin to a lovingly crafted cabinet or piece of furniture than a house, really," says Mary Louise Schumacher, an art and architecture critic for the Journal Sentinel who spent a recent weekend there.

Since the award and her article (with a fantastic accompanying video that you can view below), Yudchitz says his small Stevens Point-based firm, Revelations Architects, has been inundated with calls from people wanting to know how much the E.D.G.E. costs.

He says it's difficult to give a price, because so much depends on the site, finishes, labor costs and other details. He says variations could range from $80,000 to $125,00, adding he has no factory lined up to mass-produce them.

Yudchitz says the E.D.G.E. would sell well in Europe, where many people live in small quarters, but he's not convinced many Americans would embrace it. He's also not convinced they'll pay more for a green home.

He laments the recent experience of one of his "heroes," Dan Rockhill, an architecture professor at the University of Kansas. Rockhill told Green House last Friday that he hasn't been able to sell the last two award-winning, super-green homes his students built even though the 2010 three-bedroom one is listed for $190,000.

The E.D.G.E., which Yudchitz uses as a vacation retreat and sales model, is also seriously green. It has triple-pane windows, super-insulated walls and roof, geothermal heating and cooling, rainwater harvesting and a heat recovery ventilator.

Its huge, louvered doors are designed to help insulate the home, and its sleek wood furniture converts from a sofa to a table to a bed.

Yudchitz says the house was prefabricated at his Revelations shop, then disassembled and reassembled for the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Fair in June 2009, where about 7,000 people viewed it. After the fair, it was again disassembled, moved and reassembled this year on its current two-acre site.

Schumacher says she enjoyed her stay in the E.D.G.E., which she expects will appeal to most people as a second home or summer cottage " rather than a new way of living." She says: