Proponents of our supposed driverless car-sharing future say the system could lead to a dramatic drop in the number of vehicles in our cities, so does that mean we’ll be able to fill our sudden abundance of parking spaces with micro houses like this one? The Tikku by Marco Casagrande is a three-story structure with a footprint that fits perfectly within a single parking spot and can be erected overnight. Wherever a car can go, “the Tikku can grow,” says the architect.

“Tikku is a safe-house for neo-archaic biourbanism, a contemporary cave for a modern urban nomad,” Casagrande explains of his creation, which was installed outside of Atheneum in the heart of Helsinki for the city’s Design Week 2017. “It will offer privacy, safety and comfort. All the rest of the functions can be found in the surrounding city. Tikku is a needle of urban acupuncture, concquering the no-man’s land from the cars and tuning the city towards the organic. Many Tikkus can grow side-by-side like mushrooms and they can fuse into larger organisms.”

The self-sufficient house produces its own energy with solar panels and has dry toilets, but you’ll have to tote in your own water; the architect emphasizes that there’s no need for many amenities like showers, saunas, laundry machines or complex kitchens because such things exist all around you in the city.

The Tikku is made of CLT (cross-laminated timber), an engineered wood material that’s five times lighter than reinforced concrete, and it doesn’t require a foundation; a sand box in the bottom gives it balance on slightly uneven urban surfaces. It’s simple but cute, with interiors that might offer just enough space for a single minimalist occupant who’s dedicated to integrating into the fabric of the city. Would you live there?

A hermit crab scuttles along the sand, carrying a perfect replica of a Japanese wedding chapel on its back, complete with a tiny spire. After designing a series of crystal-clear ‘crawling cities,’ artist Aki Inomata returns with another detailed architectural alternative to natural shells, rendered in transparent acrylic so we can still see the crab’s body within.

Entitled ‘White Chapel,’ this miniature sculpture is the third installment of Inomata’s project ‘Why Not Hand Over a Shelter to Hermit Crabs?’ The shape will look familiar to Westerners, of course, as we see churches like this practically on every block. But in Japan, such structures are used for weddings only, and rarely for worshipping or any other form of religious services.

“When I visit Western countries, I sometimes notice the origin of architecture, habits, foods, etc… in Japan, they would be transformed into local styles, and I ask myself, ‘are we Japanese living in mimicry of western world?’ says the artist. “For me, these imitations, or I would say reproductions or arrangements of Western-style architecture, seem to reflect identities of post-colonialism inside of Japanese people.”

Inomata uses CT scanning to perfectly replicate the interior shape of a natural hermit crab shell so all of her artificial alternatives fit comfortably. Previous versions have included skylines of New York City and Amsterdam, as well as reproductions of buildings in Paris and Tokyo.

At just six feet wide, this incredibly narrow residence inserted into an alley in dense urban Tokyo is the latest example of Japanese architects thinking way outside the box when it comes to building new housing. The city is so developed, there’s almost no land left to build anything new, so they tend to get incredibly creative with even the oddest-shaped plots.

The four-story house by YUUA Architects and Associates extends about 36 feet into a former alley between two older buildings, and while the street-facing facade features floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize daylight and views, intimate spaces like bedrooms, bathrooms and main living areas are tucked into the back for privacy.

The minimalist interior design scheme includes floating platforms at various levels for a sense of openness, some of them made of metal mesh to let as much light pass through the house as possible. While such tiny residences are often kept bright white to create an illusion of extra space, YUUA makes an unusual choice with dark-painted walls.

There’s a semi-sunken basement for storage, and the first floor features a study area facing the street and a bedroom in the back. The third floor is comprised of an open-plan kitchen, living room and dining area, while the uppermost floor contains a bathroom, bedroom and terrace. Considering it’s only about as wide as an average adult male is tall, the house looks surprisingly livable.

Measuring just 280 square feet, this tiny house in Tokyo by architecture firm Flathouse includes a public biscuit shop on the first level and manages to fit a lot of function into an irregularly shaped footprint by taking advantage of vertical space. Built on a system of parallelograms that create a herringbone pattern both inside and out, the home has no interior walls, dividing the rooms with a series of staggered platforms instead.

For privacy-obsessed Westerners, this may seem like a strange move, but interior walls aren’t seen as a necessary part of a home in many areas of Japan. In this case, eliminating these dividers keeps a small space open and encourages rapid movement from one area of the home to the next. The shop owner can quickly move from the personal areas of the home to serve a customer on the first floor, and back again.

All levels are connected by a central staircase. The dining room, living area and private rooms are all set on small platforms with barely enough room for the furniture required in each. The shop and bathroom are tucked into a concrete basement level, while the rest of the home is lined in a light and airy larch plywood.

This approach uses the full available height of the property, creating a comfortable space despite the restrictive dimensions of the plot, a common architectural challenge in Tokyo.

These houses, apartment buildings and commercial structures weren’t built as they are because the owners really loved the view or particularly wanted a five-foot-wide house just inches from the neighboring building. They came into being out of pure spite, or gleeful revenge, or the desire to seriously annoy adjacent property owners and city planners. Here are 12 amazingly spiteful structures, starting with a very recent example that riled up members of a certain infamously hateful church.

Gay Pride Flag Spite House Across from the Westboro Baptist Church

A house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church compound is now one big gay pride flag thanks to a man whose nonprofit group Planting Peace purchased the home and painted it in rainbow colors. That’s probably not exactly a welcome sight for members of the church, who are known for their virulently anti-gay views and for picketing military funerals. Five local Kansas City painters declined to participate in the job after learning what Jackson had in mind, but ‘Equality House‘ was finally completed and unveiled in March 2013. The house got lots of attention for the right reasons, but of course, the church had a typical response to it: “We thank God for Sodomite Rainbow House!” they said in an email to TIME, claiming it helps bring attention to their message.

Pie-Shaped Montlake Spite House, Seattle

Measuring just 55 inches across its narrowest point, this wacky pie-shaped house was reputedly built to cut off a larger home from the street. According to local legend, a neighbor approached the owner of the land to purchase the plot in 1925, but at an insultingly low price, spurring the owner to build the ‘Montlake Spite House‘ in retaliation. Another story claims that the house was built when the wife of the owner was given the tiny, awkardly-shaped lot in the divorce settlement, while her ex got the rest of the property. The most recent homeowner has said that for the most part, the narrow profile of the house wasn’t a problem, except when she was cooking: she had to stand to one side to open the oven door to avoid pinning herself to the wall. The house recently sold for almost $400K.

Hollensbury Spite House, Alexandria, Virginia

John Hollensbury, the owner of the white and red houses pictured, was sick of loiterers hanging out in the alley. So he built the Hollensbury Spite House, a 7-foot-wide, 25-foot-deep dwelling in the Old Town district in Alexandria, Virginia. The house’s two main walls are the brick walls of the adjacent structures, making it more of an enclosed alleyway than an actual house, but it has been used as a residence ever since.

The Skinny House of Boston, Massachusetts

Boston’s narrowest house measures just 10.5 feet across at its widest point, with the smaller portions about 6.5 feet wide, and can only be entered through a small alley. The four-level house was built shortly after the Civil War when two brothers inherited land from their deceased father. The legend claims that while one brother went away to serve in the war, the other built a large home, leaving the soldier little more than an alleyway. So when he returned, the soldier built the narrow house to ruin his brother’s view and cut off air and sunlight to the larger home.

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Spite Houses 12 Structures Built Just To Annoy People