New London — To the seven students in one two-week summer course, thinking big can mean starting small.

How small, specifically? Between 64 and 300 square feet.

This is how Yestermorrow Design/Build School, based in Vermont, defines tiny houses, a growing trend of shrinking proportions.

"Underneath the Tiny House movement is a desire for many people to reduce their footprint, to live more simply," said Hannah Gant of Spark Makerspace in New London. She added, "There's a lot of people opting for a pathway that allows them to have greater autonomy and less negative impact in the world."

In partnership with Spark, Yestermorrow brought a tiny house design/build course, taught by Eric Cook, to New London for the first time. The class, which ran from July 6 to 18, cost $2,000 per person.

The course had students working together to physically build one tiny house — which is not yet finished — as well as working separately to design their own tiny houses.

The design for the tiny house everyone worked on came from Rody Lipson, who is entering his final semester at Hampshire College. The sustainable design major decided to take this course and work on building a tiny house for his senior project.

Lipson, who is from Western Massachusetts, will return to New London next week to continue working on the house, which will be on display in the Spark courtyard as part of Tiny Town, an interactive street festival Spark is running July 28-29. The miniature structure is sitting on a trailer that Lipson got for $5,000 from Centerbrook-based Tiny Foundations Northeast LLC.

After Tiny Town, Lipson will take the house to Hampshire College, with the goal of finishing it before he graduates. He then plans to donate the house to a refugee family somewhere in New England, and he is working out the details with the nonprofit Ascentria Care Alliance.

Another participant in the course was Jennifer Doyle, a Michigan native who has been teaching at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia for the past five years.

"I have four months off right now, so I was looking for something to do, and I've been thinking about tiny houses for years," she said, adding, "I like the more minimalist idea of it, and kind of the rejection of the kind of status of having a big house and space you don't use."

Google "tiny house" and you'll get 15.4 million results. And in case one tiny house show is not enough, HGTV lists eight on its website: "Tiny House Arrest," "Tiny House Builders," "Tiny House Hunters," "Tiny House Jamboree," "Tiny House, Big Living," "Tiny Luxury," "Tiny Paradise" and "Mighty Tiny Houses."

"It's a bit of a craze nowadays," said Tim McGuire, who runs the wood shop at Spark.

Also involved in the course was Jon Day, a Spark member since its inception and founder of the Ledyard-based design, build and restoration company Day & Age.

Day has served as the liaison between Spark and Yestermorrow. He has for years spent summers near Yestermorrow's headquarters in Waitsfield, Vt., and wondered about the organization, only to find that "everything that Yestermorrow's about, my company is about."

Day was interested in Yestermorrow because he has wanted to start a design/build school in New London, and it just so happened that Spark co-founder Gant already knew the president of Yestermorrow, Mike Crowley.

Both Gant and Day hope to continue the partnership, which Day said fits into Yestermorrow's new strategic plan goals of impacting underserved communities and working on environmental justice issues.

"It's up in rural Vermont, which makes it fairly inaccessible," Gant said. "Right now it's just one-off people going up, mostly people of affluence, so it's not actually facilitating a lot of change."

The students participating in the New London course were busy with their work for 10 hours per day. Day explained that each day involved a design session from 9 a.m. to noon, a build session from 1 to 5 p.m., and another design session from 7 to 10 p.m.

Building has included putting in a floor with insulation and framing the walls.

Also in preparation for Tiny Town, Spark is welcoming the public to events happening over the next several days. From 6 to 8 p.m. Friday will be a volunteer organizing party, which will involve testing some of the food for Tiny Town. At the same time on Monday is screen-printing, sign-making and folding of the Tiny Town newspaper.

For more information on the Tiny Town festival, visit tinytownevents.com.

e.moser@theday.com