Only 55 minutes long, Microtopia is appropriately minimal for its subject—the future of living in small and portable spaces. Swedish director Jesper Wachtmeister skips between Europe and North America (Athens, Isla Mujeres, Paris, Joshua Tree) to interview architects, artists, and a few cheerful eccentrics who are convinced that less ephemeral housing is not just a preference but will become an inevitability as the world keeps stumbling toward more people, more debt, more trash, and fewer natural resources to go around.

Bigger, his subjects argue, is no longer better; smaller is smarter. LA-based architect Jennifer Siegal designs elegantly simple houses out of shipping containers and semitruck trailers. Artist Richart Sowa lives on an island he’s building in Mexico with old plastic bottles strapped to the bottom of shipping pallets, then covered with sand, vegetation, and his house. Greek architect Aristide Antonas imagines a more severe future—concrete beds tucked into caves with outdoor toilets and showers, and open-air crane homes that hang in the sky.

One question none of them address: Where will people have sex? Many of their homes feature little privacy, or single beds, or loft beds so close to the ceiling, stacking two people on top of each other would be impossible. Nobody comes right out and says it, but their vision of the future implies more transparency, more communalism, and less shame.