About a decade ago, when the tiny house movement was first popularized on the internet by Jay Shafer and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, most of these micro homes on wheels measured between 12 and 20 feet long. Since then, they’ve seemed to balloon in size, stretching the definition of “tiny” further and further over the years. Today, many builders use slide-outs, 32-foot-long trailers, and other tricks to expand the available space to the maximum road-legal limits — which, some argue, starts to defeat the purpose.

The “Nano” house design by French studio Baluchon reigns in the excess with an extra tiny tiny house that’s still remarkably functional. Scaled down to a size that’s closer to a converted van than the standard tiny houses seen on the market today, it retains the architectural interest that leads many people to choose tiny homes over campers in the first place. It’s sort of like someone took a circa-2010 tiny house and compacted it down to a petite package that could be towed behind many standard vehicles. You still have the gabled detail in the front, the wood cladding, and real windows that make it feel more like a conventional residence than an RV, but the thing is still just 3.3 meters (10.8 feet) long while retaining the standard width of 2.3 meters (8.6 feet).

Of course, at this size, no one but the staunchest solo minimalist will be able to live in it full time. Baluchon created it for a client wh...