A Transformation of Leisure in the Architectural Imaginary: Could the Tiny House Movement Learn from Megastructuralism?

Abstract

Architecture culture inevitably revolves around the idea of leisure including its many connotations, such as recreation, reproduction, education, entertainment etc. As a concept, it not only corresponds to many spheres of everyday life, but also designates how time is being or should be spent via functions associated with architecture (such as leisure parks), through challenging architectural imagination (experimentation with pavilions or museums) as well as discourse built around particular examples of architecture. In the post-war world, leisure society was a prominent expression and had direct effects on architectural production through cultural centers, educational facilities and a vast range of public spaces that were meant to serve all individuals of society. On the other hand, leisure, arguably, is now being replaced by other ideas such as well-being or happiness. It is possible to observe a shift from a societal imaginary onto an individual one. This paper takes this shift in ideas around leisure and traces its possible extensions in the architectural culture via two trends in architecture: Megastructuralism and the tiny house movement. While the megastructralists of the 1960s imagined self-sufficient cities and communities, the tiny house movement of the past decade has been looking for self-sufficiency through singular houses/households. Departing from major texts such as Fumihiko Maki’s Collective Form (1964) or Reynar Banham’s Megastructures (1976) to old and new critical articles on the tiny house movement, this paper investigates references to leisure and ideas around it. It explores the tiny house movement and the megastructuralism; mapping their parallels in responding to crises of their era, their ways of experimenting and challenging architecture’s limits and finally aims to address what the two movements may display about one another as an attempt to enhance present architectural theory.