"One obstacle is the fact there's no official legal government regulated body… and no credit facility for tiny homes," he says. Superb coverage for a start-up, but he remains aware of the hurdles he continues to face in this nascent market.
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In 2017, Latimer was selected to build a home for victims of the California wildfires, which was presented to a delighted family on the TV show Good Morning America. David talked to BBC Culture from his studio in Venice Beach, California – restfully minimal in design, with plenty of blond wood and a vista of green plants. "The tiny house movement is growing," Amy Turnbull, director of the American Tiny House, told The Spruce: "As more people advocate their acceptance, more areas will allow them".ĭavid Latimer is CEO and founder of New Frontier Design, which was voted best luxury tiny home builder in The Spruce 2020 awards. In the US, it's estimated 10,000 people live in tiny dwellings. In other countries, it seems the tiny-house industry is moving faster. "Everybody's talking about living in tiny houses," admits March, "but very few are doing it."
Still, we're talking about a minuscule minority in the UK, where it's estimated only 200 people are living in tiny houses – despite all the interest in them. Some just love the diminutive, sleek design of their small house. Lifestyle and values are the main driving forces here: the tiny house territory goes with rethinking what's important, such as strengthening local communities, or preserving the environment or the desire to spend more time with family or on activities that downsizing allows.
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However, March says: "It's virtually impossible to get full planning permission to live in full-time and site it on a permanent basis." Another way around it is to buy land and change its use to glamping or a small farm. Some get around it by siting their house on land owned by family or friends, while others rent land, from a farmer, for example – all also bypassing the need for planning permission. The cost of a building plot as well as a tiny house can make it prohibitive. That could cost me £200,000, but I can spend £60,000 on a tiny house, and have a brand-new home for a third of the cost, so it's a no-brainer." March owns the land his one is sited on he has planning permission for a permanent residence there but says: "I have no intention of ever building a 'normal' house. The cost of land can be a key consideration (or stumbling block) in owning a tiny house. They initially sited it on a campsite, where monthly rent was more than £500, and have since moved it to one of their parents' gardens to live rent-free. Even though a video they made showed Joss's head touching his bedroom ceiling when he stood up, they're delighted with their tiny house, claiming it's "exactly like living in a conventional house".
Clients include David and Becky Westwood, and son Joss, who bought a standard £50,000 model. March's company produces around 15 tiny houses a year. Shafer founded the Tumbleweed Tiny House company, before leaving to focus on social justice and housing rights. Jay Shafer, the "godfather of tiny houses", spearheaded the modern movement when he built a tiny house on wheels and wrote The Small House Book in 1999. The roots of the tiny house movement can be traced to 19th-Century US naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau, whose book Walden (1854) is an inspiring meditation on simple living in natural surroundings. The idea – that having less space and stuff can create room in our lives for more important things – is an appealing one.
In the same way that minimalism and decluttering captured the zeitgeist as a counterpoint to conspicuous consumerism, so too has the tiny house movement found its moment. "Feels more homey to live in a small house," he tweeted. Musk upped the tiny-house ante when he rented one in Boca Chica, Texas, while working on his SpaceX venture. One of the most high-profile of the movement's many champions must be Elon Musk, the multibillionaire Tesla chief.
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Witness the nearly 2.5 million Instagram posts with a "tinyhouse" hashtag a massive internet following and burgeoning number of documentaries and TV series, such as the Netflix show Tiny House Nation, and a series on the subject by UK architect and TV presenter George Clarke.
The buzz around the tiny house trend – an architectural and social movement that advocates for downsizing living spaces – is increasing. In the world of home design, a revolution is taking place – and its future is tiny.
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