Urban Industrial Tiny Home Is Actually a Gorgeous Mini Mansion on Wheels

Most people aren’t fond of the idea of downsizing or living on the road, and sharing a cramped space with another person can have many downsides. The Instagram-glorified vanlife looks perfect – where else? – on Instagram, but it can become an ordeal in real life.

Then, there’s the financial aspect. Tiny houses may offer a mobile lifestyle, but their price range is in sharp contrast to their compact footprint. They’re too expensive, to put it bluntly. Sure, builders and owners say that you save a lot of money on them and promise you will be living debt-free and at a much lower monthly cost, but for that to happen, you need to be loaded to afford one.

This leaves many of us with window-shopping, and this particular tiny we’ll discuss today is a gorgeous example of such a mobile unit. It’s not just gorgeous: it’s also larger in size than the average tiny, to the point where its owner refers to it as a mini-mansion on wheels.

The video below is a tour of this urban industrial home by Bryce Langston, for the popular YouTube channel Living Big in a Tiny House. The owner is introduced simply as Kyron, who built the tiny on his own. Kyron is actually Kyron Gosse, chairperson of the Tiny House Association in New Zealand, and a successful entrepreneur that is working toward building a tiny house village at Muriwai Beach on Auckland’s West Coast.

Before settling down in his not-so-tiny tiny, Kyron traveled the world. When he returned to New Zealand to get into real estate, he read the room and decided that a tiny was the wisest choice for him in terms of living arrangements, from a financial standpoint. As the housing industry boomed, he has been living debt-free in his comfortable – and gorgeous – scaled-down mansion, at a fraction of the price of an actual home. His tiny was NZ$200,000, whereas a home in the area sells for about NZ$1.5 million (US$135,000 to US$1 million).

Offering a total of 30 square meters (323 square feet) of living space, the mini mansion sits on a double-axle trailer, and meets local requirements for towing. Kyron “parked” it in a friend’s parking lot, which he says she hardly ever used and, at first, didn’t even want to grant him because “who would want to live there?” The advantage of the spot is that it’s in the midst of lush local bushes, while just minutes from the beach and within walking distance of the city. It’s isolated from the noise, yet within reach of everything.

The tiny has sleeping for two in the master bedroom, with an additional double bed in the lounge. The layout is not unlike the layout of larger tinies, with two lofts at each end, on top of the kitchen and the bathroom, respectively. Both the kitchen and the bathroom are the same size, which translates into a proper bathroom and a kitchen where three people can cook and move about at the same time. The lounge is tiny by comparison, but the livable area is made larger by means of sliding glass doors that open it completely to the outside deck slash terrace.

The bedroom is over the kitchen, with storage-integrated stairs for access. You can’t stand in either loft, but Kyron made sure to compensate for that by creating really cozy spaces with real-life (but slightly altered) furniture and plenty of storage. The other loft, initially designed as a secondary bedroom, has been turned into a “TV den” where Kyron and Natalia, his partner, can catch up on their favorite shows or work.

For a tiny, this mini mansion is furnished and styled very much like a home, with an emphasis on comfort. Still, because the space is restricted, you won’t see an agglomeration of stuff, so the overall appearance remains sleek and clean. It’s a minimalist mansion, if you will.

Kyron calls his planned tiny home village the Muriwai Micro-Collective, where residents will be able to shift the work-life balance in their favor. He believes no man should have to work to live, and looks up to public figures like Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, and Sir Richard Branson for their work for environmental causes. He dreams of a sustainable future, where poverty has been eradicated and nature has healed, and believes downsizing is one way of getting there.

Whether you agree with him or not, you’ll probably agree that his tiny is one of the best-looking and most elegant out there.