Sep 27
2010
Today tiny houses are an extremely popular interest for architects and choice for homeowners. These small projects seem to encourage experimentation not only with materials but also with ways of living.
What does the current preoccupation of architects with small, even tiny, houses tell us about the culture, about architecture, about markets?
Azby gave the final word
I’ve identified what I feel are a set of conditions, or factors, whose presence is likely to cause people to look at tiny homes as an alternative. For the sake of argument, I divide them into “hard factors” and “soft factors.” They don’t all have to be in place, but the more that are present, the more attractive a small house will be as a solution… I guess what I’ve been noticing is that while the “hard” factors seem to be the primary drivers, the way that the emerging environmental ethics and other spiritual values reinforce this trend is something new to us in the West. We very well could be witnessing the birth of a new aesthetic based on these technical and spiritual values, and this is probably what excites architects and designers.
Friday, October 1 at 10:21pm
I see the rise of the tiny house movement as a tonic to the sprawling growth of McMansion-style homes during the economic bubble. With the subprime mortgage meltdown and the current recession, these micro architectures are critical sites in which to put forth values of modesty, sustainability, and a less-is-more approach to consumption.
Also, for architects, the tiny house, like house projects in general, represents a controllable way to test formal ideas and experiment with materials. Much of the invention in the latest round of tiny houses comes from trying to respond to crisis and the need for efficient relief shelters.
Yet, it has to be noted that much of the buzz around small and tiny houses comes not from within the architecture community, but from non-professionals—enthusiasts looking to craft their own piece of Walden in the woods, or a shack in their backyard.
Monday, September 27 at 10:42am
Both Chuk and Mimi have raised points about economics, as well as about underlying architectural/ethical principles. Having just moved into a little studio apartment myself, these issues are very near to the surface of my mind. Informed by such ethical questions and economic constraints, contemporary life is highly granular in nature- we consume information on a per-article, per-tweet, or per-TED-talk basis. Amongst the ever-growing throngs of the global cosmopolitan élites and the bohemian bourgeoisie, there has already for some time been an emphasis on the needs, wants, and capabilities of the individual. Collaborative work is enjoying heightened popularity under the auspices of today’s emerging digital communications technologies and the accompanying digital culture, but the most innovative collaborations seem to me to be taking place between individuals and within small, lean and flexible teams, on a project-by-project basis. Corporatism has been called into question, and entrepreneurialism and self-reliance where possible are the mode among thought leaders, and throughout, more and more people are becoming illuminated to the full scope of the profound magic acted upon one’s psyche and one’s quality of life by the nuances of our surrounding environs.
Even as humanity awakens to its dreams, its masses grow in number, but our resources remain finite.
The young and emerging thinkers and tastemakers of the day are intelligent enough to seek quality over quantity. These, the leaders of tomorrow’s world, have been raised to be cognizant that the things they’re paying for- the communities and experiences that they’re working to (re)build- hold their virtue in a certain elegance and curation of experience and not in brute quantities of physical matter.
For many working young adults- given the financial and temporal commitments of their daily lives- taking a university class may be an unfeasible time commitment; on the other hand, attendance at one or more non-sequential lectures, art exhibition openings, or similar events can be more readily undertaken at one’s leisure, and within one’s personal budget. Similarly, dating and short-term relationships are all but expected of today’s urbanites- and so, too, it is with our relationships, as humans, to the physical forms with which we surround ourselves.
In the twenty-first century, we have chosen individualism, but we want community, and beauty, too. Small but beautiful spaces such as my studio apartment appeal not only because they are within budget and pleasing to the eye, but also because they resonate with us at a moral level, in that they can be easily configured to encourage intimate moments with friends and loved-ones. I see my studio as an ideal venue for small dinner parties full of warm conversation, and possessed of a well-worn, familiar privacy that, for me, might serve to answer the questions of modernism raised by the ebb and flow of the city outside.
Monday, September 27 at 12:59pm
@max, I am also a studio apartment dweller. To follow up on your comments about community and collaboration. I would add that in urban areas the rise of small screens (aka those little portable computers we keep with us), combined with a larger freelance workforce (ahem, economy), and the re-emergence of coffee shop culture (both boutique, starbucks, and the fact that my central library has a cafe), makes living small in a city possible.
In more rural areas, the individuality expressed by tiny houses is often driven by eco-ethos and personal responsibility. See the Free Tiny House http://www.tinyfreehouse.com/ and the Relax Shax blogs. http://relaxshax.wordpress.com/
Both run by guys building their own small houses out of recycled materials.
Monday, September 27 at 2:06pm
To follow @max and @mimi, it seems that context is a big part of the equation. Nobody would live in the small apartments in New York or Tokyo if not for the breathtaking and enormous scope of the city. It seems that we will trade private for dynamic public space. Additionally, many small houses exist surrounded by expansive natural settings.
The eco-minded and market-conscious argument for tiny houses is strong today. But aside from that, the well-designed tiny houses I’ve seen (mostly from books or magazines) have an attention to materials and sensuality that much architecture (“with a capital A,” as Nicolai Ouroussoff says) is lacking nowadays. Too many unthoughtful computer renderings (leading to flimsy buildings) have drained architecture of its soul. With smaller houses, it’s more difficult to hide behind zany forms. The experience is magnified.
Still, I don’t know anyone personally who lives in a “tiny house,” save for a neighbor who built a “treehouse” with electricity and plumbing (not really roughing it, is it?) and had his kid live in it. This will surely change as our concept of what is big continues to evolve, and we tweak our notions of how much space we need. Nowadays, the Glass House looks like a “tiny house,” in comparison to much architecture of today.
Monday, September 27 at 8:40pm
Max’s characterization of contemporary life as “granular” strikes me as one convincing way to account in part for the current interest in small houses. I am less sanguine, though, about his view of an emerging youth having discovered that quality is a higher value than quantity. It seems to me that each generation, having failed to live up to these ideals consistently, looks to an emerging generation to do better. I don’t yet see the evidence that the 21st century has “chosen individualism.”
Mimi has listed a number of developments that have made it possible now to live small in a dense urban environment. Are there others?
Wednesday, September 29 at 11:30am
What does this preoccupation tell us? In a word: £€$$
On the other hand, to use a lot of words: it certainly is more complex than just less money. One of the emerging themes of the 21st century is clearly the awareness of more-people-and-fewer-resoures but even as we collectively seem to be understanding this, we are still a bit reluctant to acknowledge that such an equation has some very nasty implications.
Natural resources such as oil & gas are finite and even renewable resources such as water & wind may have limited carrying capacities for human population. We cannot create more of these resources but we do have the power to reduce population. But how do we humanely eliminate, for example, a billion people such that the equation balances again? That is an uncomfortable thought. Another uncomfortable thought is that the 21st century may very well be as full of bloodshed & conflict as previous centuries (probably more so, given what is at stake).
Most of us in the educated, civilized parts of the world (including architects) are too polite to suggest eliminating people as a solution to diminishing resources. It’s too pessimistic also. So for now we are doing our best to make do with less and we rationalize it anyway that we can. Moving into a smaller house is a much easier pill to swallow if it is considered fashionable. Naturally, architects have a long history of salesmanship when it comes to presenting a vision of the future so if living small is the way then it is the architects who will ease our reservations by crafting the alluring images of how we can live.
Hopefully the vision of a “less is more” future is an effective strategy in dealing with the exigencies of the 21st century. But even if it proves to be delusional and another world war slaughter ensures, then at least we’ll have those cozy, little womb-like houses for hiding until the dust settles.
Wednesday, September 29 at 12:59pm
The visible drivers of interest in small houses is clear; recession, demographic pressure, currency deterioration, and even momentary fashion.
To the dedicated architect it is a focus to exercise the highest level of craft.
It is apparent that Johnson’s Glass House is the most effective statement honoring the natural environment. The architecture is acting as a carrier wave for a very significant cultural attitude.
Is the small house wave a metaphor in response to the critique noting the disparity separating the western world from the emergent world?
The wild card is the marketing strategy which will merely reduce the cubage and employ the old ideas about interior equipment and design.
This change requires new and inventive ideas about residential architecture to prevent the creation of a nation of overcrowded dwarfish shacks.
Wednesday, September 29 at 4:45pm
Ralph- You may be right about my perspectives on youth and individualism. Youth’s a fleeting thing, and my perspective is skewed, because I spend all of my free time among artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs, and I’ve never been older than I am now. All I know is that I’m routinely amazed by the ideas I’m exposed to, and that this gives me some optimism. Living in Washington DC at the current moment, my world is one in which a huge premium is placed on individual talent and achievement, and it does at times lead me to forget that world outside of the District as often as not operates on a rather different social order.
Brian- ‘Educated’ and ‘civilized’? As you’ve applied them to this conversation, these words worry me, as in this case they were brought into use while discussing the hypothetical collective death of one seventh of humanity. How would you even define the ‘educated and civilized parts of the world’?
What about the Khasi people of Northern India? They’ve been growing bridges out of tree roots in the forested areas of their lands for more than five hundred years, and in the recent past, nearly tore these up because ‘civilization’ is too-often treated as synonymous with cement, glass and steel. The Khasis can grow their own physical infrastructure from the land around them, but I possess no such ability. Who is more educated?
The world is not flat. Its resources are in limited supply. Entertaining the idea of ‘eliminating’ the ‘uneducated’ is not merely impolite- It’s not a morally viable option. The construction of small living-spaces and the accompanying cultural mindset are thus in vogue for good reason.
Wednesday, September 29 at 5:42pm
Having studied compact (ultra-compact, really) home design here in Japan for over two decades, and having watched it emerge as a major trend over the course of the past several years, I’ve identified what I feel are a set of conditions, or factors, whose presence is likely to cause people to look at tiny homes as an alternative. For the sake of argument, I divide them into “hard factors” and “soft factors.” They don’t all have to be in place, but the more that are present, the more attractive a small house will be as a solution. And in may cases, only one factor will suffice.
“Hard factors” tend to be external and somewhat inescapable. I’d include:
Economic factors– This means macroeconomic trends as well as the conditions an individual household faces. Macroeconomic factors drive the cost of construction, of property, and will affect taxes, utility rates, available stock of existing houses, and many others. Because a compact house can be much less expensive in all of these areas, it’s often an obvious choice. Similarly, a particular family’s finances may put them in a situation where a tiny house is the best alternative to no house at all.
Demographic factors: The fact is, in Japan as well as in many Western countries, the US included, the composition of households has changed drastically over the past several decades. Many households today–DINKS, unrelated roommates, families with only one child, etc,– don’t really need the large homes of the past.
Urban factors–Compact homes are primarily an urban phenomenon, closely related to density and limited available space; many get built as infill. Urban centers are attractive places to live for many people, and often a compact house is the best option. Urban conditions often tend to encourage the construction of multiunit dwellings, which have inherent economies. In addition, individual units can make use of the same space-economizing design features as tiny houses. Also, urban centers often allow many “home” functions to be offloaded — there are more options for eating out, for entertaining, etc.., so more of life take place outside the home.
Technological factors — We know how to design and make these things better now. There’s a long history of prior art, of successful experiments to draw on. New compact homes can be better engineered, and the design of compact appliances has gotten better and better as well, so there’s less sacrifice of comfort, convenience, or safety. If one can easily avail oneself of these technologies, a tiny house will make more sense.
“Soft factors” are things that are primarily internal–mental, spiritual, emotional, social. I’d include:
Values — Most of the soft factors are value-based. Many people realize that maximizing their consumption will not satisfy them, and are seeking a better way. This is not a new value, but other developments have recently given it fresh form in a design sense.
Environmental values loom large in this issue, and are closely tied to energy cost and cost of resources; in that sense they overlap with hard economic factors. Obviously lots of people are still fine with chugging along just as they have been, and more McMansions are built every day. But I see an emerging ethical imperative that drives more and more people to minimize their environmental footprints, to minimize waste, etc.. Counter trends and counter values make it less of a social liability to live in small house; this is certainly the case in Japan, where this change marks a kind of postwar ground shift. Living in a tiny home is not necessarily a sign of lack of wherewithal. In Japan, it seems like a house has to be compact for it to be considered “good design.” This may increasingly become the case in the US as well. Sarah Susanka deserves a lot of credit for promoting attractive alternatives there in “The Not So Big House” book series.
Cultural factors: Many kinds of cultural background might make a household more predisposed to live in a small house; again I’d hold Japan, with it’s long history of very small homes, up as a prime example, but most Asian countries also have similar cultural background, and there are many other examples as well. This may be more “conditioning” than values per se, though obviously they are co-evolving.
Psychological factors: This might fit under “values” as well. Some people are psychologically predisposed to feel comfortable in a small space, while others aren’t. Going beyond conditioning, this seems to depend on how a person is hard-wired to perceive the space around them, and what that triggers in them emotionally. Good designers make use of many psychological tricks to make small spaces feel more comfortable, but there are people for whom these tricks just don’t work. They will always be miserable if they have to “live small.”
To sum up, I think “tiny” house design will continue to grow as a global phenomenon, just like compact cars have. They’re just a great solution for a lot of people in a lot of situations. But the ethical, soft side of the equation may ultimately be the most elusive. Having written a couple f books on the subject, my own experience is that books on compact home design are like diet books: people think they should do something positive, but if 100 people buy the book, maybe 10 will actually take a few steps to prepare for the diet, and only one or two will actually start it. Maybe fewer. Just buying a book or gathering information satisfies part of the emotional urge, and for most people it seems that that’s enough.
Thursday, September 30 at 8:53am
So to clarify what I’m hearing from the above comments:
1) Money/Economy/Resources are essentially at heart of the matter?
2)They are not the sole reason, but instead inform a culture of “less-is-more”-ism?
3)Architects are in ways at the mercy of both economy and the general masses in terms of what Is considered a viable design in current times?
I think the cultural aspect is of special importance to this discussion as that can heavily inform the types of spaces one is comfortable in. Those who’s culture tends towards large family and living close to or with extended family are probably used to larger, if not more cramped, living spaces. Those who’s cultures tend towards a leaner definition of family, or of immediate migration post-education, are more than likely predisposed to living with many less people and therefore in less space. These are just extremes of a broad spectrum, but culture is a factor that can influence the overall leanings of both the public users of buildings and the architects themselves.
So maybe the right answer would serve its purpose best if it addressed the question from the aspect of culture as it informs the architects and markets.
Thursday, September 30 at 11:17pm
“Less-is-more”-ism = minimalism, no?
Chuk, you’re right about cultural factors. Your comment made me think about how broad culture is, and how individual and collective values of the kind that are rarely well-defined outside of fora such as contemporary anthropology circles are so strongly at play in constructing human demand for these- or any- spaces. So much of what we do with spaces depends on narratives we tell ourselves about space and time, and a people’s relationship to these dimensions of existence necessarily informs our relationships to the spaces we live in, and how we relate to them as discrete places. Is time linear, circular, a spiral? All-over-the-place? How do ideas of ownership and rentership enter the equation? Philosophies on human lifespan and mortality? Ideas of permanence, and post-Abrahamic theological notions of sustainability play a role here, often in denial or omission of my preferred, related operating principle of harmony. People like the ‘sustainable’, I feel, because they like the idea of immortality, of security. I like the harmonious, because I’m relatively comfortable with the idea that I’ll pass on, and that I may as well be flexible and have fun first, and I want to live right by the world around me. For me, a small space fits my needs better, and is more fun. For those who phrase the grammar of their life-movements in terms of sustainability, the outcome looks similar, but there are different underlying principles, and most observers won’t pick up the nuanced difference. So, unless I’m just caught up in the semantics of it all, the current preoccupation of architects with diminuitive dwelling-spaces can indicate any of several things on an ideological level, but one interesting element of culture is that, in its conformation to the economics of whatever era it exists within, it allows for coexisting yet different strains of behavior and thought, and as in this case, it can be difficult to tell the strains apart.
Friday, October 1 at 11:17am
I don’t think that minimalism, as a design philosophy, is seeking the very least. There are a whole class of experiences that, while pared down, are still often expensive, intricate, or full of planning and purpose underneath the surface. There’s a certain elegance to sparsity, to austerity done right, and a certain color in the vastness of empty spaces and blank canvasses, regardless of their size or scale. I understood that less-is-more-ism was probably an intentional turn of phrase, and I know that classically, minimalism was about reducing design to only its necessary elements, but I believe that “less-is-more,” and not the “least” is- largely- what contemporary minimalism is about. After all, minimalist design is still ultimately concerned with things, and quite often nice things, at that.
Friday, October 1 at 7:46pm
Azby gave the Final Word
I guess what I’ve been noticing is that while the “hard” factors seem to be the primary drivers, the way that the emerging environmental ethics and other spiritual values reinforce this trend is something new to us in the West. We very well could be witnessing the birth of a new aesthetic based on these technical and spiritual values, and this is probably what excites architects and designers.
Friday, October 1 at 10:21pm
Jen hopes that this trend betokens a return to the Arts and Craft movement. I hope she’s only,half right. I believe there is a new emphasis on craft, on making, as evident in the DIY trend and in such phenomena as Make magazine. This seems all to the good. But what I remember of Ruskin and William Morris, and the association of design with very particular moral values, suggests that the “movement” — perhaps any movement — is not what we want to go back to now.
Ken fears the prospect of a “marketing strategy which will merely reduce the cubage and employ the old ideas about interior equipment and design” resulting in “a nation of overcrowded dwarfish shacks.” That surely is a real danger, and one that, as far as I know, hasn’t been given much attention in all the recent discourse about the virtue of smallness. We have a long tradition of screwing up good ideas because they are convertible to bad ideas that are more profitable. It is possible, maybe even easy, to create small dwellings that are terrible places to see, live in, or have around.
Chuk neatly breaks down the components of this discussion. I find Azby Brown’s distinction between hard and soft factors to be an especially helpful way of viewing the terrain. The soft ones, as usual, tend to be the most difficult to measure or to see clearly.
I suppose this subject invariably leads to Thoreau. At least I can’t help thinking of the provision in his cabin for three chairs: “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Of course Facebook allows room for many more friends at a distance, but I don’t think they’re what Thoreau meant.
Saturday, October 2 at 2:15pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Chukwuma Agubokwu
Student, University of Maryland, College PArk
0
I think it’s safe to make this a two-pronged causation theory (with broad prongs!): there is first the recent state of macro- and microeconomics–causing budgets, and subsequently spending, to shrink–to consider, and then the direction that many physical technologies have gone.
To better illustrate my point, consider the television. It started out relatively space consuming, with its vacuum tubes and all, then got progressively bigger in general as all the associated technologies actually took less space. Big screens were quite popular in the 90s (or it would seem from all the TV ads of the time, alas I was born in 1990, please help my limited experience where it fails) before the flat screen took prominence. And now many people find TV much more functional to watch via a smaller screen as that on a laptop, iPad or portable media device!
I think somewhere in there, you can trace the history of architectural zeitgeists and find parallels.
Monday, September 27 at 8:41am