Over the past decade Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.



This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’ shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents their homes and communities while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social cultural and economic shifts at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.

Fundamentally this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin Texas as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin as both centring community and shared assets and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.

Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged the American Dream - the home-owning society the suburban bliss the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows both impacts of tiny housing are equally true and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.

from the Introduction



‘In the rest of this book we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start in the next chapter by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there we go into three empirical chapters focusing on economies of tiny living the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces and community culture. We then draw the book to a close and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life especially in relation to the American Dream.



‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven in large part by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque boutique upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing as we’ll argue in this book specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages to countless coffee table books to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living but you’ll already know if you’ve read this far that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

Contemporary art has a complex relationship to crisis. On the one hand art can draw us toward apocalypse: it charts unfolding chaos reflects and amplifies the effects of crisis shows us the dystopian in both our daily life and in our imagined futures. On the other hand art’s complexity helps fathom the uncertainty of the world question and challenge the order of things and allows us to imagine new ways of living and being – to make new worlds.

This collection of written and visual essays includes artistic responses to various crises – including the climate emergency global and local inequalities and the COVID-19 pandemic – and suggests new forms of collectivity and collaboration within artistic practice. It surveys a wide variety of practices oriented from the perspective of Australia New Zealand and Asia. Art making has always responded to the world; the essays in this collection explore how artists are adapting to a world in crisis.

The contributions to this book are arranged in four sections: artistic responses; critical reflections new curatorial approaches and the art school reimagined. Alongside the written chapters three photographic essays provide specific examples of new visual forms in artistic practice under crisis conditions.

The primary market for the book will be scholars and upper-level students of art and curating at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Specifically the book will appeal to the burgeoning field of study around socially engaged art.

Beyond the academic and student market it will appeal to practicing artists and curators especially those engaged in social practice and community-based art.

This book examines the distinctive nature of Arts Based Learning in Education (ABLE) in the context of a changing curriculum in Ireland. It draws on recent research on the state of the arts in Irish schools from early years primary schools post primary to higher education institutions.



The wide range of perspectives from pedagogy to practice draws on research in the visual arts literature and the arts within teacher education. Teacher identity formation and students’ perceptions of learning within the writers in school’s scheme are some of the themes within the book. It also includes examples of collaborative interdisciplinary practice between educational and cultural institutions. The book is situated within a rapidly changing curriculum policy framework and examines the relevance of arts-based learning against the backdrop of the drive for 21st century skills.

Last Artist Standing shares the essays of the lives of 31 artists over the age of 50 how they have sustained their creative lives what paths they have led showing who contemporary artists are today.

They are mentors to other artists having learned how to thrive and be creative through decades of life's travails. Sharon Louden wants to share these stories with the public so that their models can be replicated by all age groups both within and beyond the art world.

This collection addresses the ability of these artists to remain contemporary as they adapt through generational shifts the physical financial and professional challenges they have overcome to remain vibrant and sustaining artists and their role as inspirational models to others who may be turning to art late in their lives.

A Renaissance is underway. It can be seen as a response to environmental societal and ethical issues so acute that human survival is in question. Artistic philosophical and political it builds on the scientific revolutions of the last decades and positions itself in relation to technoscientific and transhumanist promises. Within this Wild Renaissance man no longer positions himself as master and owner imposing his will on a passive and purposeless nature. He makes ready to listen to a new partner: the world around him. He discovers the potential of its forces which he both harnesses and engages with joining them with his own. A new era is taking shape restoring man to his “wild” dignity and giving his existence meaning joy and ambition. An art is emerging that is redefining the paradigms of creation. Its work is in the vanguard of this societal project.

There is a major tendency in contemporary art and design and perhaps the most innovative one that is putting in place new ways of working and producing works which represent a significant break with the principles that have guided modernity up to the present. We are witnessing the beginnings of a renaissance that can be described as “wild.” Powerfully ambitious it stands as a response to the acute environmental societal and ethical questions raised in today’s world and at their heart the very survival of the human species as we enter the Anthropocene era. It bears witness to massive shifts in consciousness and echoes a call for a change that is becoming increasingly audible. Nature or more precisely a new way of being “wild” – that is to say of thinking and acting on the Earth is the key reference around which the contents of an alternative common destiny are being articulated. The “Wild Renaissance” is supplanting both the modernity that placed man at the center of the world assigning him the vocation of becoming the master and owner of nature and postmodernity which put an end to the great narratives and left only an absolute relativism incapable of supporting new sustainable models.



The word “renaissance” is not used lightly. It stems from a philosophical and ecological analysis of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. This upheaval did not come out of nowhere. Today as back then a period of some hundred and fifty yeas paved the way for its emergence. The proto-Wild Renaissance goes from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century. The evolution and convergence of art philosophy and the sciences of the environment can be observed there in relation to key historical and political moments that have repeatedly raised the question of the continuing habitability of the Earth.



The Wild Renaissance is articulated around a renewed vision of humankind and nature. Humankind no longer aspires to impose its will on a passive purposeless nature. Instead it is beginning to listen to a new partner: the world around it. Humanity is discovering the potential of these forces and entering into a relation with them allying them with its own. Humanity is going from from master to collaborator assuming an ecological responsibility that goes hand in hand with a revived dignity and an existence that is all the more exciting for all that. Already-established figures in contemporary art and design together with emerging creators are at the forefront of this new movement. The works and practices analyzed here are shown in a new light with a fresh understanding of their historical grounding conceptual underpinnings and significance for the present.

Previously published in French by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).