Ian Sansom

Hobbit houses and 3-D homes

Fear not: Kirsten Dirksen's films are not some shoestring Grand Designs. There is no enthusing, no vacuous summings-up, no false jeopardy

issue 07 April 2018

Since 2006, someone called Kirsten Dirksen has been posting weekly videos on YouTube about ‘simple living, self-sufficiency, small (and tiny) homes, backyard gardens (and livestock), alternative transport, DIY, craftsmanship and philosophies of life’. But don’t let that put you off.

Basically, Dirksen makes short films about people’s quirky homes: ‘Tiny Parisian rooftop terrace transforms for work and leisure’, ‘Extreme transformer home in Hong Kong’, etc. Fear not: this not some shoestring Grand Designs. There is little or no enthusing, there are no vacuous summings-up, there is no false jeopardy. The videos vary in length: some of them last for less than ten minutes, others for close to an hour. Many are in Spanish (with subtitles). Occasionally, there are voiceovers, but more often there’s simply the mildly disinterested voice of the person showing Dirksen around their house. ‘And here’s the composting toilet.’

Dirksen, who looks like a stressed-out maths teacher, is often in shot, shown filming with her camera, which implies that there’s someone filming her — we occasionally glimpse a man who one assumes is her husband.

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