LOCAL Houston | The City Guide October 2016 | Página 44

THE TINY HOUSE MOVEMENT–TEXAS-SIZED BUILDERS THINK BIG BY BUILDING SMALL By Tim Moloney | Photography by Joseph West I am always amused – and amazed – when reading a story in The New York Times, for example, about living in a tiny 200sf apartment in New York City. However the photographer shoots it, the place always looks spacious and stylish, but as you read on, you learn that the bed folds down into a desk/dining table, or the bathroom somehow converts to a galley kitchen. Who wants to live like that? While that may be an extreme example, a lot of people are taking part in the “tiny house” movement. Led mainly by millennials, who are eschewing the material trappings of their forebears, the movement has finally reached Houston, home of the Tuscan McMansion. But, at 1,200sf, these tiny houses are actually Texas-sized. Welcome to Live Oak Landing in the Energy Corridor, ground zero for suburban sprawl, and now the home of these innovative small houses on reduced-size lots. Builders THOMAS DORSEY and MARK COERVER, native Houstonians, UT graduates and business partners, are betting big that Houston is ready to live smaller. 44 L O C A L | october 16 Mark Coerver