I’ve prided myself on being able to Tetris space really well… no matter if it’s packing a car or making the most of my living space. However, I gotta say this small house really elevates the art of Tetrising to a whole new, delicious, level!
This tiny home is built in a hutong, a narrow alley between an existing wall and adjacent building. And not only that, it’s wrapped around a corner. But it’s no dark, awkward, and cramped hovel. By leaving one edge continually open as a kind of atrium hallway – including making great use of the tall and curved wall it adjoins by painting finishing it white and running a continual skylight along its edge – and placing nearly all of the living spaces on the other side as a series of adaptable cubic follies, it’s got great flow, feeling airy and even expansive.
Varying in height and chock full of tiny living tricks, bits of these follies slide and shift to reconfigure the spaces as needed to accommodate various uses, providing plenty of communal day space that becomes more private as it shifts to sleepy time. At one end, a large glass door and window is actually one giant unit that can swing completely open, making the back patio and the house into one. Equally nifty is that the cubes are fully climbable, leading to spaces left dedicated to children play, study, and sleep areas. It’s kind of like the ultimate bunk bed or tree house, but still inside. (Fear not, the adults aren’t completely left out of the fun, for on the other side of the L, there’s also a mezzanine bedroom and office.)
(And seeing that bench brings me a smile, for I have one of those in my foyer as well! Though sometimes it’s also used to practice kung fu… then again, for all I know, so is the one in the photo…)
I love this. Really smart design that creates an awesome house in the most conventionally unlikely of places, showing that the boxes in our mind of what a house needs to be can be quickly expanded with some carefully packed yet playful boxes in a creative home. Nicely done.
Lynx Thoughts 