Hi guys. We're here in Vancouver,
British Columbia we're at Kessler's tiny house, the tiny community center.
We're going to take a tour.
Come on in. Wow.
So this is Zee and this is her tiny community center. Yeah.
So why don't you tell me a little bit about why this is called a tiny community
center and not a tiny house. Originally when I first came up the idea,
I thought it would be neat to build a house for myself, but then I thought,
well what if I put it in someone's backyard and the neighbors complained?
So I thought, okay, well my practice is, I'm a community based artist.
So that basically means you work with the community,
you have a dialogue about things. So I was like,
maybe we should have a dialogue about tiny houses. So I thought, well,
the best way to do that is to put one in a public space and see what people
think. So I thought maybe what we could do, start an artist,
residencies slash workshop space where people could come and check one out that
had never seen one before and we'd run some courses inside.
And so we just got a park board's residency here in Vancouver for the artists
and communities program and we're doing a project called the magic trout
Imaginarium.
And so it's like a curiosity cabinet classroom where you explore your
neighborhood and just learn how to see everything around you as inspiration.
Which design did you end up going with at the time?
It was called the fence now it's called the Cypress with tumbleweed.
And then I uh,
brought the plans home and show it all my friends eagerly and they were like,
Oh, we know how to do houses too, if we can help you.
And so my friend Gianna helped me redesign certain aspects of it,
like adding these awesome windows at the back for more light and changing the
pitch of the roof.
And then we had a workshop where Josh and Dave and John taught people how to
build.
Nathan helped with the trailer part and people registered to take the workshop.
And then so that helped fund our project basically.
So the interior is about seven and a half feet by 19.
And then the exterior is about 20 by eight and a half by 13 and a half tall.
So how many students do you think you could have in this tiny classroom?
So we could fit 12. Um, so two here,
two here facing this way two facing this way to one and one we still have to get
chairs for these two spots. And then another one there,
depending on the classes we're having,
like these ones here are actually in their kind of finished state,
but basically they fold down. So if you wanted to have like a movie,
pull down a screen, you know,
you could all sit on the floor on cushions and everyone would be able to have a
space and all of our, um, benches or storage. Um, so, uh,
when we actually start our workshops, we'll have, um, you know,
art supplies and do like paper and things like that.
And so even with back bench is, storage, as well
I really like how you've designed this.
You have a door here as well that you know,
you can actually write your class schedule on. Yeah, it's a little smudge,
but it's, yeah, we wrote a classroom, like a hypothetical classroom,
a workshop schedule last night.
We just thought it would be nice to have one door a little bit bigger because in
tiny houses you often have a much smaller front door. And we thought, you know,
for accessibility,
if someone's in a wheelchair we need a little bit bigger outdoor on one side.
So. Yeah, exactly.
And what kind of classes do you think you're going to have here? Well,
we have three artists. Um, my friend friends was to go, who is,
an artist who makes drawing devices for people that think they can't draw.
And she basically takes pieces of plexiglass and puts acetate on them and then
you can kind of look around in your environment and frame things and then trace.
So it's, it's like a way for people to learn how to draw that. They're like, Oh,
I can't draw. well it's tracing, you can,
you can look at what you see. Um,
so we're doing sort of like explorations in that. And then, um, another artist,
Emily Smith is um, she does stuff with textiles.
So she's going to be teaching spinning and natural dying with, um,
different natural ephemera.
which is where our residency is,
and then I'll be sort of doing some classes on curiosity,
cabinet building and collections and how to find inspiration and found items,
a lot of the artwork and items found in here.
I've been collecting for about two years since we came up with the idea for this
project. And, um, a lot of my friends are artists. So over the years I,
I've just been collecting some of their work and I really want to display it
cause I think they're just amazingly talented and deserve recognition.
So I have some art from my friend Jen who is an amazing painter here in
Vancouver and this is a portrait of their house that they renovated themselves.
It's the oldest house in Vancouver.
I thought I would buy that just to sort of document a moment in time.
And it kind of reminds me of the tiny house in a way. So, um,
and then there's some artwork by my friend Aaron Pasternak who is a photographer.
Along the top we have Sean Caremaker who does these beautiful scrolls.
He's also a video game designer and comic book maker.
And then I have a couple artworks by Brad Radway who makes art out of found
pieces of wood, like drift,
what he finds on the beach or just what he finds in alleys and he finds the
knots and finds characters hidden inside. And he also did the pigeons up there.
And then we have an artist,
Ruth Monroe who worked at a cafe across the street from where we were building.
And she watched us build the house over the whole summer and said,
can I paint you a mural? We said, of course. Then we checked out her website.
Her art was amazing. So we were just super impressed. So the puppet, um,
it was a present from my mom actually. It's just such a cool, authentic,
like real marionette, like it's just so neat. It's kind of hard to maneuver.
It's pretty heavy though. But you know,
it comes out and dances sometimes at parties,
Josh and Dave work in the movies and they use a lot of um,
really thin ply when they make movie sets and they know how to work with it
really well and they, you know, the, you know, the limits of it.
So they thought, well that's just way better for this particular purpose.
And so they put in the plywood and then we have,
we put some wallpaper over top, which I know is not common of tiny houses,
but because we're not really cooking and showering in here for the artist
residency, it's not really going to have any moisture problems.
So think thought it would be kind of funky.
We got a lot of stuff donated for this house. Like almost everything was free,
like all the framing and all the windows and all the um, insulation.
And so we had all these windows and um, John McFarlane of camera buildings,
he's the one that modified the designs. He said,
well we have these extra two windows, maybe we could do something with them.
And then he thought, well you know,
I think the thing that would be really neat is sort of creating some kind of
design that distinguishes it from a shed.
Cause you would never see this type of design in the windows in a shed.
And he's like,
it'll just kind of create like an icon for your project and let way more light
in. And when I saw what he was doing and I was like, how does that even work?
There's this box that's a sort of sits in the middle and it's actually kind of
put together in this like cabinetry style where it's like all notch together.
And then there's also like metal rods coming up to support it.
So it's essentially one giant, huge window, but it looks like it's,
it's four windows.
This is just a really inspiring place to take art classes, I think.
But that was the whole idea. Yeah.
I think that when you make an inspiring place, people become inspired.
So it's it's natural idea for an artist to try to create a really neat space.
And I remember taking an art class in high school in a science lab and it was
just not inspiring.
I remember being so affected by the space and I guess that's maybe what drove me
to create spaces for people to create.
What do you think the advantages are of having a classroom on wheels? Well,
I think that if you can move to different communities, you're not, you know,
you're not just stuck with one group of people that might just walk by every day
and check it out so you can move into a community or to a park and then you can
kind of get to know the people in that neighborhood and create a hub and then
you're there.
We're going to stay at places for maybe like six months to a year and a half,
get to know people, create a community, introduce people to each other,
and then when we leave, those connections are still there. So it's great for us.
It's great for them.
And I think it'll just be neat to explore different communities.
And have different people hear about what we're up to and get to use our space.
Now this is originally in the tumbleweed design. It's a bathroom area,
but what are you using it for?
So ours if it was a bathroom would be a wet bath. Um, so it's, you know,
just imagine this is the toilet and then there would be the shower up there.
But actually we're planning on using it as a photo booth.
So this is like the little tickle trunk where you put all your costumes and then
you would sit down and there's going to be like a tablet or an iPad there and
you can control it and take photos with your friends.
So we thought that would be kind of a neat use for the bathroom.
Let's just let people use the park board bathroom and we'll use this for a funky
welcome to the kitchen kitchen nook.
Our kitchen counters are made out of um,
recycled hardwood flooring that we found on a website called freecycle.org which
is like Craigslist, but they only have, you know, recycled stuff from people.
And I find people who are a lot more reliable and like excited to give out
things and they actually show up and you know,
they're excited to give it to you. So I really like free cycle.
And so our cabinets and our counter and the loft floor is made out of this
recycled hardwood. Josh made them, he's pretty talented.
He does everything and uh, yeah,
he like notch them and fought the metal and he came and he just does funny
things where like he won't tell me and you'll just put something like that on
there and he knows that I like weird stuff.
So he's always surprising me with fun stuff.
So what is the plan for the kitchen during the classroom session?
I'm thinking it might be useful to use this space right here and put like a um,
a taller chair,
like a Barstool and have it as an extra spot in case there's an extra person or
maybe for the instructor to like have a spot to prepare.
I think we'll just find out what what's happening at first is just going to be
artsy things, but we might be able to bring in a hot plate and for when we're,
um, when you make natural dyes, you often warm it up with a hot plate and,
and put like the, the leaves inside of a pot to get all the colors out of them.
So that might happen. Any refrigerator plans?
I think it's a cost thing at this point. We're trying to keep it low cost.
So if we come across a fridge that fits in there, that'd be great. But if not,
it's, I don't think we need, need it. Like it's, it's definitely not, um,
high on the priority list right now. Well, if nothing else,
it's a great place to display the art. Yeah, exactly.
Like I think it would be really neat to have like this area used in an artsy
way. So if you eventually put in an oven and now I'm just spit balling,
you can do like clay creations and stuff too. Yeah.
And like there's this things called Shrinky dinks you draw something and then it
like really, really small, which is good for curiosity,
maybe we'll and the play on words,
exactly tiny everything at this place. So, um, the ladder,
we plan on painting these runs,
you don't see all the foot marks and we also plan on putting some kind of clear
plastic behind here because um, you know, your feet might scrape the wall,
but we haven't gotten to that point. We finished it a day ago,
so that's the future. But anyways, um, so yeah, it's attached on here.
All right, so this is the upstairs area.
So what are you going to be using this space for? For the community center?
I think what we'll do is, is use it for coats,
coats and shoes and things like that because I'm, when you have 12 people,
there's no way they're all going to fit downstairs and we might have birthday
parties at some point and that would be a good place to put presents and
storage. Yeah, it's a good storage. It's an attic. Yeah.
I suggest whoever is the teacher should make a grand entrance every day to class
by coming down.
Just descend into the room.
Okay. So why don't you tell me a little bit about your trailer? Yeah,
so my partner's a welder, which is magical.
That's actually how we met talking about this project.
And he modified a trailer that we found and it was buried in the back of a junk
yard somewhere and it took forever to get it out of the spot.
And it was a dovetail. So he actually modified it to be a flatbed.
Lots of little things had to be done,
had to be re painted brined and all that sort of stuff.
So for our siding we use Cedar and we got it off of a guy who actually works at
the railroad unpacking things.
And when they have like an odd amount of stuff that you can't like sell the
whole thing, he, he gets to keep it and sell it I guess. So, um,
he gave us a really good deal on the siding and uh,
so we decided to put some sealant on it to make it kind of stay like a kind of
golden color. We thought it worked well with the trim color,
but one thing that we didn't realize or I didn't realize is, um,
Josh and Dave and everyone sent me to go get the siding and just like go get
siding has to be this thick. And, and I bought beveled siding,
not realizing that our trim did not account for bevel sightings.
So what we actually have to do is either take off the siding and redo the trim,
or we could just put some foam and then put some sealant in there,
which is going to be, you know, like for the longterm,
you don't want to get bugs in there.
So that's one of the kind of little mistakes that people make some times.
I don't know if other people make this mistake,
but I know exactly how that happened.
And that's what happens when you work in a big crew of people and everyone's
kind of in a rush because there's just forget one little detail.
Things like that can happen. And we were just like, well,
we just have to get it done. So right. Deal with it later.
These are sort of attached gutter. So, um,
because our trailer, it's built, like our house is built over the wheel Wells.
We have to take off our gutters every time we move.
So when we bought our gutters, we didn't have a, a way to transport them.
So we just got these kind of like. But it works. It keeps the,
it keeps the water off of the side because we noticed the sealant was rubbing
away and one side was, I guess it was a little bit tilted.
We hadn't leveled it yet,
so we just had to get them in a rush and we just never really had the chance to
fix it and do it properly. But next time we move, we'll do it properly. Right.
So this is our vertical garden,
and we got the, they're called chicks and hens.
We got them donated by a place called Figuero's garden on Victoria drive in
Vancouver. And they were nice enough to give us a whole bunch of these. Yeah,
I think it looks kind of neat. Cool. Well,
thank you so much for taking through the tiny community center. Yeah.
I can't wait to see what happens next. Until next time.