The Cabanon is a completely equipped apartment of 6.89 m ² including an infrared sauna and a bubble-bath. It has four spaces and it’s most probably the tiniest apartment in the world; definitely the tiniest with a spa.
Project Name: The Cabanon – the biggest smallest apartment in the world
Studio Name: STAR strategies + architecture and BOARD
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Date: 2014-2024
Surface: 6.89 m² (net.) – Volume: 21.19 m³
Design Team: STAR strategies + architecture & BOARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research and Design)
Photos: Ossip van Duivenbode
The Cabanon measurements are H 3 m, W 1,97 m, L 3,6 m. It has a 6m² window overlooking Rotterdam. It’s organized into four spaces radically different in materials and heights: a 3m-high living room with kitchen, a 1.14m-high bedroom with lots of storage, a WC with a rain- shower, and a spa.
The Cabanon makes clear that different spaces with different sizes and functions might not need the same height. The Cabanon appeared to get bigger the more programs were added to it. The adjustment of heights made that possible.
The Cabanon is the conversion of an existing attic used for storage into a living space. It’s located on the top level of a 1950’s residential building in the centre of Rotterdam. The four rooms in the Cabanon have been shaped around standard products: the bedroom was designed with a specific mattress in mind; the spa according to the bathtub length; the kitchen depended on the depth of the mini-fridge, in order to avoid the need of customized objects, but rather the other way around : the Cabanon would adjust to standard and affordable products.
The Cabanon takes its name from the eponymous cabin of Le Corbusier at the Côte d’Azur. Like the Le Corbusier cabin, the Cabanon of Rotterdam has been conceived by the same architects who’ll use it: Beatriz and Bernd. It’s 6,89 m ², half the size of Le Corbusier’s unit and – unlike his Cabanon – totally self-sufficient and designed for a couple.
The Cabanon is a temple in the proportions of its creators who became the modulors of their Cabanon. It’s an experimentation in space for Beatriz and Bernd who progressively saw personal growth in voluntary reduction. nevertheless, this reduction was in no way understood as austerity. The Cabanon is of the most luxurious smallness, an epicurean reduction.
The Cabanon could help optimizing housing and costs but in no way does it approve the reduction of spaces as the only strategy towards affordable housing, neither it pretends to be the “house of the future”. Nevertheless, we can make use of some of its strategies in order to improve current housing production and make it more affordable. Some of these are the optimisation of space – optimisation not understood as ‘reduction’ but as ‘maximisation’ of the possibilities of one space; the adaptation of heights of certain spaces in order to superpose some functions; and the detachment towards possession and consumerism, so we’re less inclined to buy and accumulate useless objects that clutter our houses and minds.
