Tiny: A Story About Living Small
Architecture & Design (collection)
•
1h 1m
Directed by Merete Mueller & Christopher Smith • Documentary • 2013 • 62 minutes
After a decade of travel, Christopher Smith approaches his 30th birthday and decides it's time to plant some roots. He impulsively buys a 5-acre plot of land in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong dream of building a home in the mountains of Colorado. With the support of his girlfriend, Merete, he sets out to build a Tiny House from scratch despite having no construction experience.
From 1970 to 2010, the average size of a new house in America nearly doubled. Yet in recent years, many are redefining their American Dream to focus on flexibility, financial freedom, and quality of life over quantity of space. These self-proclaimed "Tiny Housers" live in homes smaller than the average parking space, often built on wheels to bypass building codes and zoning laws. Tiny takes us inside six of these homes stripped to their essentials, exploring the owners' stories and the design innovations that make them work.
"A story about learning to live large—about expanding our concept of what our domestic spaces can do for us, in connecting us to our communities, to nature, to our loved ones, and to our dreams."—Austin Chronicle
Up Next in Architecture & Design (collection)
-
How to Build an Igloo
Directed by Douglas Wilkinson • Documentary • 1949 • 10 minutes
A demonstration of igloo-building in Canada's Far North, showing how the site is selected and how blocks of snow are used to make a snug shelter in only an hour and a half. As the camera follows each stage, the commentary explains t...
-
Future of Mud
Directed by Susan Vogel • Documentary • 2007 • 58 minutes
Through the story of a mason in Djenne, Komusa Tenapo, and his family, this documentary examines an African tradition of mud architecture in Mali. The environmental genius of these ancient construction techniques thick walls with tiny win...
-
Suspension
Directed by Simón Uribe Martínez • Documentary • 2020 • 75 minutes
Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly. Once intended as a link in the new “bypass” that was supposed to...