Tiny Houses

Incredibly small apartment showcases ideas for extreme downsizing

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The Cabanon is a micro-apartment that's situated in a former attic and has a floorspace of just 6.89 sq m (74 sq ft)
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon is a micro-apartment that's situated in a former attic and has a floorspace of just 6.89 sq m (74 sq ft)
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon is used as a second home for its architect owners
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon includes one large window that overlooks Rotterdam
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon is definitely not for the claustrophobic but has been designed to suit its owners' needs
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon's bedroom is reached by removable ladder, which is stowed on the bathroom door
Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon's spa area is reached from within its bathroom
STAR-BOARD
The Cabanon is situated at the top of a 1950s residential building and the space was previously used for storage
Ossip van Duivenbode
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Described as probably the smallest apartment in the world, the Cabanon is indeed extraordinarily tiny, measuring just 6.89 sq m (74 sq ft). However, thanks to its clever layout and folding furniture, it's more fully featured than you might expect and even squeezes in a bath and spa area.

The Cabanon takes its name from a cabin of the same name owned by famed architect Le Corbusier. It was conceived by Beatriz Ramo of STAR strategies + architecture and Bernd Upmeyer of BOARD (Bureau of Architecture Research and Design). The designers will actually use it together as a second home.

The micro-apartment is located in a former attic space used for storage in a 1950's residential building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. To put its size into perspective, it makes even compact tiny houses look big in comparison. The Hartley tiny house, for example, has a floorspace of 27 sq m (290 sq ft).

It has a height of 3 m (9.1 ft), a width of 1.97 m (6.5 ft), and a length of 3.6 m (11.9 ft), all of which is split into four areas. The raised bedroom is accessed by a removable ladder which is stowed on the bathroom door. The bathroom itself contains a toilet and rain shower, and offers access to the spa area, which includes two infrared saunas and a whirlpool bath. The kitchen/ living room, meanwhile, contains a large storage unit that hides a sink, fridge, large table and cooking facilities. It all sounds a bit complicated, but the arty shots provided by the architects show how it comes together.

The Cabanon's spa area is reached from within its bathroom
STAR-BOARD

The project was obviously shaped by working around the lack of space, but also by cost-cutting efforts. For example, the cost of building materials made the decision that the spa would be clad in black Chinese marble, and the shower in blue mosaic.

The designers don't really see the Cabanon as a blueprint for future housing – nobody would want to raise a family in this thing – but it could be good food for thought on how to better make use of small spaces.

"The Cabanon could help optimizing housing and costs but in no way does it advocate towards the reduction of surfaces as the only strategy towards affordable housing, neither it pretends to become the 'house of the future,'" say the architects in their press release.

"However, we can extrapolate some of its strategies in order to make current housing production better and cheaper. Some of these are: the optimization of space–optimization not understood as 'reduction' but as 'maximization' of the possibilities of one space; the modulation of heights of certain spaces in order to superpose some functions; and the detachment towards possession and consumerism, so we are less inclined to buy and accumulate useless objects that clutter our houses and minds."

Sources: STAR, BOARD

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6 comments
Tech Fascinated
Similar to the main character's apartment in the movie "The Fifth Element". Watch out for the autowash feature ;)
Username
For a jail cell it's quite lovely.
paul314
Has the notion of space-saving loft beds been completely forgotten, so that it's a new thing? (Maybe in the US, where cookie-cutter spaces with 95-inch ceilings make it hard for adults to use the space under a lofted bed.)
Techutante
And not one inch of it comfortable. Yours for 500k in most modern cities! Reserve today!
anthony88
6.89m2 is very small. The smallest I could find in a quick look for central Tokyo is 13.5m2 and about US$80,000. Someone on Reddit has a post about a 35sqft / 3.25m2 apartment in Hong Kong. I guess any smaller and you're looking at an unlit, unserviced underground apartment.
veryken
It's a decent showcase, leading the entrepreneur to wonder... what if we offered a semi-modular, quasi-custom, simplified method for clients/customers to design their own, and we build it as prefab in preset rectangular containers to be delivered onto site? What if, furthermore, the in-situ process is standardized for easy utility hookups? Then the only remaining elements would foundation and local permitting. Huge possibilities and potential.