Small but perfectly formed

Stella Rosato

• Last Updated: January 24. 2009 10:55AM UAE / January 24. 2009 6:55AM GMT

Katrin Grieling’s apartment in Dubai ticks all the boxes when it comes to desirable living. She has floor-to-ceiling windows and a stunning view that takes in all the city’s iconic buildings – including Burj Dubai on clear days. She has an office, sleeping, living and dining areas and direct access to an airy, outdoor terrace. Yet Greiling manages to fulfil all her living requirements in just 24 square metres of space.

“I set out to look for a centrally located apartment with full-length windows… and access to outside space but on my budget alone it would have been impossible.”

Determined not to compromise, Greiling, a furniture and product designer who was born in Germany and raised in Sweden, leased an upmarket one-bedroom apartment. She then let out the bedroom and transformed the living room into a self-contained space, loosely dividing it into specific function areas. “I hate closed doors,” she says. “I prefer to use all of the space I live in and by thinking smart I got the living solution I wanted. I don’t spend a lot of time at home so I don’t actually need any more space than I have.”

A decade ago, the architect Sarah Susanka changed attitudes and tastes with her groundbreaking interiors book The Not So Big House (Taunton) which repudiated the “McMansion” syndrome, which makes us yearn for vast square footage. Susanka didn’t advocate a small house for its own sake, but to create a sanctuary that simplifies life rather than wastes energy maintaining it, and to encourage homeowners to spend their money on beautifying homes rather than simply making them bigger. “The focus should be on quality rather than quantity,” she says. “It’s about what makes us feel comfortable rather than what impresses the neighbours.”

Susanka’s philosophy resonated with fellow architects and designers and started a bit of a ‘not so big’ movement. It also caught the public’s imagination; an appearance on Oprah catapulted Susanka’s book to the top of the bestseller lists and, as the decade-long blaze of over-consumerism slowly dies out, the book’s core sentiment that small is infinitely more beautiful suddenly makes very good sense.

In September Fast Company, a US business publication, asked its readers if they would be willing to move into a smaller property if the government provided incentives for them to do so. It wasn’t the ratio of respondents who would or wouldn’t reduce the size of their home that was surprising, but the number of high-earning professionals who already have. “We’re heading towards a population of nine billion [globally] and we all need to live smaller,” said one reader, who was living with his partner in a 60 sq m apartment on a joint income of $350,000 (Dh1.3 million). I’d rather spend my money on experiences, not space.”

Living small is hardly a choice in Tokyo, a city that championed capsule hotel rooms and where renting a cubicle in a cyber cafe – to live in – is not unheard of. However, a younger generation of Japanese has decided that while living large is simply not an option, they can, at least, live well. To cater to them, the Tokyo-based architectural practice Comm Design has developed stand-alone, ultra-compact homes featuring about 30 sq m of usable space. The tiny houses are based on a post-war design built by the architect Makoto Masuzawa to accommodate his family of five. Comm Design’s first commission in 2004 was for a couple with two small children: their $115,000 house features a wall of windows, a compact and efficient kitchen, a tatami room and a spacious loft. Masuzawa’s original design was dubbed “the minimum house”, but Comm Design says it should be renamed “the maximum house, since its design makes the house seem open and spacious.”

In Scandinavia the trend for beautifully-designed shrunken spaces grows apace. “Despite Sweden’s land mass we have never aspired to enormous homes, which I think is for cultural and environmental reasons,” says the designer Jonas Wagell. What Swedes have enjoyed historically are their friggebods – small shed-like structures that can be placed next to water, where larger-scale building is prohibited. Wagell has run with this garden shed concept to create his prefab Mini House. The units are available in 10, 15 and 20 sq m, need no building permit and feature an attached pergola that doubles the space. Wagell says the design is intended for winter and summer living. “I wanted to approach architecture as product design. The same way you can select options for your car, you should be able to accessorise your Mini House.” Therefore Wagell has designed sauna and cook-bath modules, a storage unit, a heater kit and a solar power unit.

“It is so much more of a challenge to design small,” says Wagell, “but the outcome far more satisfying.”

Wagell’s philosophy is shared by the architect Gary Chang, who tackled Hong Kong’s pervasive overcrowding head-on. Chang grew up in a 32 sq m apartment in one of Hong Kong Island’s most densely populated neighbourhoods with his mother, father, three younger sisters and, incredibly, a lodger. After Chang qualified and his family moved on, he bought the apartment himself for $45,000 and set out to prove that a high quality of life was possible in a restricted space.

The result is the Domestic Transformer, a series of sliding walls and panels that glide over a mirrored black granite floor giving the apartment 24 different layouts including a kitchen, laundry, living room, games room – even a guest room. To inspire shoebox dwellers, Chang has also written a book about his experiences: My 32m2 Apartment: A 30-Year Transformation (MCCM Creations).

“It is all about using the space you have to the best of your ability,” explains Greiling. “I don’t understand how people just move in and furnish without living in their space and deciding what their needs are exactly – no matter how big or small the area is.”

She is also keen to acknowledge the cultural environment of her spaces. While Chang’s cutting-edge apartment enjoys a quiet, Oriental simplicity, Greiling’s nod to her surroundings comes in the partitioned “office” in her apartment, inspired by the workmen’s huts that feature on every Dubai building site.

“They are such a part of the landscape yet we never really notice them so I was keen to give them some attention,” she says. “I just walked around some sites until I found my favourite one, took the measurements and had it made.”

“When designing small, it’s important to give the space a strong sense of identity,” says Teun van den Dries, the designer of Maff apartment in The Hague. “It needs to be a gem, simply unique.”

Measuring just 30 sq m, it includes a kitchen, bathroom, toilet, living and sleeping space. Maff is primarily a bed-and-breakfast located in the third-floor attic of a private house, but tenants have been known to lease it for weeks, even months.

“Thirty-five per cent of the space is sanitary so for the remainder we had to do as little as possible yet still create an impact,” says van den Dries. “We achieved it by installing the dark floor, white walls and the one dominant colour – it would have been too sterile without it.” The project has become van den Dries’s signature, with many clients requesting their own version. “We have shown that it is possible to create a beautiful, habitable space in a very restricted space – and, not surprisingly, people find that very attractive.”

Opting for a smaller, sleeker life does have its disadvantages however. Forget shoving piles of mail into a drawer – it’s likely to have a microwave in it, says Claire Wolfe, a writer who lives in splendid isolation in the US Midwest in a tiny wooden cabin built by Tumbleweed, a company committed to designing ultra-small for ecological reasons.

“People automatically assume that a smaller house requires less housework than a big one,” says Wolfe on Backwoods Home, a support website for self-reliant living. “But no. In small spaces, every dirty dish left on the counter, every pile of bills you set on a tabletop upon return from the post office, becomes – proportionally – a big mess. Unlike in a large house, they’re right there in your face. They might be taking up your only workspace or eating area.”

She also notes that when all domestic activities are confined to one small space, that space will get dusty and dirty more quickly than when spread around 100 sq m.

In an effort to support small space dwelling, Gretchen Broussard opened Tiny Living three years ago, first as a store in Manhattan, later as a website. Even she, a former resident of a New York studio that measured 18.5 sq m, didn’t believe what a gap in the market the store filled. The store’s mantra is “love your small space” and, judging by the company’s success in shifting folding laptop trays, collapsible laundry baskets and funnels, even a magnetic salt and pepper designed to stick to a fridge door instead of taking up valuable work or shelf space — it appears most are at least willing to try.

“There is just so much more scope for creativity,” says van den Dries. “Living small is rather like the urban equivalent of camping – you just find a space and inhabit it.”