Combine a tiny house and minimalist design and the New York Times gives you another contender for an anti-McMansion:

Living in a one-room house with an ultra-minimalist aesthetic and two small children sounds more like the setup for a joke than something any reasonably sane person would attempt.

And yet that’s exactly what Takaaki and Christina Kawabata set out to do when they renovated an old house here. They were convinced that an open space with as few toys and material possessions as possible was a recipe not for disaster, but for domestic calm…

“Most of the people we’ve invited here are shocked by how we live,” Ms. Kawabata, 41, said. “How we can raise kids without toys and clutter and stuff everywhere.”…

Eventually, there will be an addition, a 1,500-square-foot structure that may be connected to the main house with an open walkway. But that’s a few years off. For now, instead of walls, the family makes do with transparent room dividers created out of metal frames wrapped with nylon string.

There are three features that set up this home apart from conceptions of a McMansion:

1. A smaller size. This one-room house has 1,200 square feet. It is interesting to note that the home will eventually include another 1,500 square feet which would then put it above the average for a new American home at 2,500 square feet.

2. A different and better design. Rather than having spaces for everyone to do their own thing, this home is one big open space where the family is always together. Additionally, the minimalist design is presumed to be better aesthetically (and presumably in durability and appeal to others) than the typical McMansion attempt to impress and mash together numerous styles.

3. The commitment to live with less stuff. McMansions might be so large because even as the average American household has decreased in size, the average new home has increased dramatically in order to hold more consumer goods.

At the same time, I would guess most Americans would not accept this particular design as the best anti-McMansion: it is too open (do household members want to be that close?) and minimalist design does not appeal to everybody.