We’re looking forward to sending good news about Tiny Houses your way.

Thanks for your interest and support!

~ Leslie

Leslie Pritchett
Director
Tiny House Project
leslie(at)tinyhouseproject.org

Deep questions are being posed about our use of scarce resources, the structure of our housing market, and the demands that assumptions about the “American Dream” house have placed upon how we live. The Tiny House Project will work with artists to create a traveling exhibition of nine very small houses, using these structures as canvases to explore our collective relationship to the scale of the spaces we occupy, addressing the environmental, social, psychological and financial ramifications of the choices we make.

The Tiny House Project will bring together a group of artists to help us explore how we, in America, live. Nine artists will create a neighborhood of tiny homes in order to ask some very interesting questions about the choices we make. Do our choices bring us joy? How do they shape our connections with the people around us? In what ways will our choices change the lives of future generations? The Tiny House Project is a public art experiment, and everyone is invited to participate.

Issues the project seeks to explore include:

Our Physical Footprint
• A re-evaluation of our need for and use of housing space

Our Environmental Footprint
• Reconsideration of our use of scarce resources in housing development
• Reduction of our housing’s environmental impact
• Creative applications for use of sustainable and reclaimed materials

Our Social Footprint
• Consideration of our American ideals and the scale of the houses we occupy
• How we relate to one another, or don’t, based upon our housing choices
• Homelessness and inequity in housing in America

Our Fiscal Footprint
• How do the choices we make in housing impact other life choices?
• Overzealous home indebtedness as a source of our current economic crisis

Program Overview

The Tiny House Project team is currently working to raise the funds needed to cover project costs. We anticipate putting out the call for submissions later this year after we’ve raised sufficient funds. (We’re targeting December 2009 for the call.)

The Tiny House Project will put out a call for submissions asking artists for tiny house project proposals. Artists who’d like to make sure they receive information about the call, should join our list and indicate that they are an “interested artist.” Specific criteria for these proposals are being developed with input from members of the Project’s Advisory Committee to ensure that the resulting structures meet artistic, environmental, structural and communication objectives. A qualified selection panel will choose nine tiny house projects from the pool of applicants to receive funding (a more detailed description of this two-stage call follows). Each artist/project team will be given a 7’ x 14’ trailer bed and $23,000 to cover the cost of materials and artists’ fees associated with designing and building a tiny house that will then be incorporated into a temporarily occupied micro-community and a follow-on traveling exhibition.

For the traveling exhibition, the houses will be arrayed in a diminutive neighborhood, a contained community situated around a small road too narrow for cars. The exhibition will have a very human scale, and visitors will be invited to participate directly with the intimately crafted spaces that the neighborhood and the tiny structures create. For the initial phase of the exhibition, the houses will be occupied. The stories of this social experiment will then be woven into the remainder of the exhibition as the neighborhood travels to seven (or more) varied California contexts; from a Bay Area museum, to the edge of Modesto, and urban settings in Sacramento and downtown Los Angeles. Participants will be invited into the spaces for a brief, immersive encounter with the vision of the houses’ creators. An audio tour will be produced for each of the houses, and for the neighborhood as a whole, exploring the themes being considered.

The Project will secure funding in three phases as outlined in the attached budget, 1) initial seed funding, 2) funding for design and construction of the houses plus a four-venue exhibition in the Bay Area, and, 3) funding for an extended exhibition in venues in California’s Central Valley and culminating in Los Angeles. Funding for the Bay Area exhibition will be secured from a range of sources: seed funding through donations, sponsorships of houses at $15,000 per house (offering specific communications benefits), in-kind donations, and museum venue fees. The extended exhibition will be funded through additional sponsorships and grant funding.

At the close of the exhibition, the houses will be sold at auction. Proceeds from the auction will be shared with artist teams, and/or invested in future program expansion.

Project Goals, Audience and Outcomes

The primary goal of the project is to offer participants an opportunity to experience through immersive and visual means (with additional direct didactic information) how their choices in housing impact their own lives, how our society functions, and how we make use of our planet’s scarce resources.

Beyond the direct participants identified above, the audience will include a broad population reached through traditional and new media channels. We anticipate that in the course of the California regional incarnation, approximately 300,000 people will participate in one of these capacities and we estimate that an additional 1,000,000 or more will be reached through media coverage.

Project Philosophy

Tiny Houses as Art Objects
The Advisory Committee has placed the emphasis on the artistic exploration of the concepts/issues embodied in the project, as practical architectural responses to the issues outlined are being addressed elsewhere. The hope is to engage participants in direct communication, experience, and opportunities for “poetic revelation” through interaction with the tiny houses and the project as a whole.

The Nature of the Social Experiment

The tiny house neighborhood will be occupied for approximately one month, currently envisioned in a vacant urban lot of a scale that could house a large single-family home. The stories and learning experiences of the people living together in the houses will be woven into the continuing exhibition. The emphasis will not be placed on mechanics (e.g. each house having its own plumbing), rather the opportunity will be presented for communal solutions to pragmatic needs such as toilets, showers and security.

A Key Message: Living Sustainably

The concept of sustainable living is core, endemic, to the Tiny House Project. Applicants will be asked to submit first-round project concepts with as few constraints as is reasonable so as to encourage “out-of-the-box” and creative proposals that directly address the project’s key issues, particularly sustainable living in a context that requires more life to be lived communally.

Call for Submissions

The call for submissions will be in two phases. The first phase will focus on the broad generation of creative concepts that address the project’s main themes. A subset of applicants from first-round submissions will be asked to develop more refined proposals for the construction of their tiny homes. As needed, applicants will be teamed with volunteer architects and engineers to help them refine their concepts. Applicants will be informed of the parameters for round-two consideration at the outset, and will be told that the project will provide advice and direction in helping them meet phase two requirements (sustainable building, structural integrity, etc).

A qualified curatorial committee has been formed that reflects the interesting balance of this project– with expertise in public art, social constructs, and sustainable living. Advisory committee members include experts on the structural safety and viability of the houses, including architects, an expert in sustainable building practices, and a structural engineer.

The Traveling Exhibition

The Tiny House Project will be exhibited in (at least) seven venues – three in Northern California and four in the Central Valley and Southern California. Each venue will offer a markedly different context, adding a richness to the exhibition as the neighborhood is installed against a range of backdrops that call for different conclusions about the experiment. The Project is currently seeking apt venues, including public spaces, spaces in highly urbanized areas, within more remote communities generally underserved by public art, within museums, and in the high desert.

Expect to hear from us, at this point, every few weeks:

Do our choices bring us joy? How do they shape our connections with the people around us? In what ways will our choices change the lives of future generations?