With space for new abodes in big cities growing harder to come by every day, some architects are getting mightily creative. The skinny house trend takes abandoned alleyways or unconventional spaces and finds new ways to construct homes in these extraordinarily narrow locations.
How small is too small? Keret House still holds the crown for the world's narrowest living space ever constructed, with an interior width of between 28 and 48 inches (72 to 122 cm). It's a marvel of creative design, and a nightmare for claustrophobic individuals.
![Keret House is the world’s narrowest living space, built in Poland by architect Jakub Szczesny. The house's interior width varies from 122 cm to 72 cm (48 - 28 in), with a length of 12 m (39 ft) and two floors](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/6cf6d85/2147483647/strip/true/crop/665x1000+0+0/resize/638x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fskinny-narrow-house-photos-2.jpg)
The lineage of skinny house design goes back several hundred years with many narrow European buildings slipping into slender spaces. More recently, in 19th century United States we find tiny "spite house" structures popping up in weird little locations. Named "spite houses" because they were often built to annoy neighbors or steal extra land, these cute little buildings still proudly stand today.
![Another 19th century “spite house”, this tiny building arose in 1830 in Virginia after a local became fed up with the noise and crime that congregated in the small alley next to his home. So the solution, he first bricked up the alley before roofing it and turning it into an additional residence](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/fe0ce20/2147483647/strip/true/crop/487x604+0+0/resize/487x604!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fskinny-narrow-house-photos-39.png)
Modern skinny house designs tend to make the most of strange plots of land and impressively illustrate how creative many modern architects can truly be. These structures can be inspiring, forcing a designer to take risks and turn unused urban spaces into new livable homes.
Take a look through our gallery for a trip into the skinny home world.