Trend Forecasting
Micro Compact Home
Sleep Box
Sleepbox is a small sleeping space designed by a Russian architecture company named Arch Group. It has been designed so it can be installed in locations such as airports, stations and shopping centers to provide a comfortable place to rest whilst people wait.
Although not a home, this Sleepbox is a prime example of how designers are looking at the trend of ‘micro’ and adapting ideas based on the up and coming trend. With the small dimensions of 4 square meters, it still manages to contain a bed and a fold out table. Thanks to technology advances the Sleepbox contains Wi-Fi, LED mood lighting, touchscreen TV and automatic payment system. This demonstrating that the move to living smaller would be made easy by new technology.All these items can be fitted into a small space due to the micro sized technology. The overall design and appearance of the Sleepbox in contemporary and functional. Although small in size the space looks inviting and useable. The design is quite similar to the ideas that have already proved popular in Japan of the ‘Pod’ style hotels. Due to urban crowding in Chinese and Japanese cities, they are ahead of the game and have already caught onto the idea of living micro and it looks like the world is being inspired by this and set to follow.
The Sleepbox has now also been converted into a hotel, providing evidence for the demand and popularity of the idea of living small. The Sleepbox Hotel is set in a 800 square meter space including a reception. Inventions like this provide a back up for the rising global urban living and lack of space. Once a design theory and experiment, the Sleepbox is now a usable and working design. This shows the need for micro designs like this and them no longer being concept ideas for futuristic living. We are now in that future and need to think about living smaller.
Images and reference via: http://sleepbox.co.uk
The company Micro Compact Home enjoys the challenge of trying to condense modern life into a small yet comfortable living space.
“The way they use in the interiors. You don't have walls, everything that is a wall surface is also a cupboard at the same time, so the old concept of having wall, ceiling and floor doesn't actually exist in the compact home...Everything that one needs.” (Life In a Box, 2008)
The Micro Compact Home is an extremely contemporary design and the space planning makes it livable. The home has been made and used by a variety of people, from private home owners to accommodation for students. It is proven to work as a concept and contains everything one would need to live comfortably.
Micro Compact Homes are very technology aware and adapt the new technology into the space allowing it to be as small as possible.
“Recent life has been transformed by the internet, flat screen television, the microwave and compact fridge freezers, long duration LED lights and ceramic disk tapes and clean hygienic fittings. The micro compact home could not have existed before these, the storage of books was an essential part of learning and the ownership of artefacts an essential expression of wealth.” (Horden 2012, p.8)
This indicates how the rise in technological advances is allowing us to live smaller and personal belongings take up much less space. The way technology is moving forward is creating a new way of living and format within the home.
Images and references via: http://www.microcompacthome.com
Mima House is an example of contemporary home design that can provide a livable and affordable small home. Mima was designed by Mima Architects and is a prefabricated home in Portugal. As it is prefabricated it means that the home is affordable and easy to build. These are two high demands that I have noticed for housing today.
Mima architects designed it with the idea that homes need to be designed in relation to peoples lifestyle and societies. The architects questioned:
‘How can architecture adapt to the quick life changes and ambitions of a well informed and increasingly exigent society?’ (Mima Design 2011)
With these two factors ever changing the Mima house adapts to these changes through its clever design. The architects have based the design on and been inspired by a traditional Japanese home and their use of shoji screens, fusuma panels and tatami mats which in Japan fit together precisely in the home. The home has been designed so that the interior space can be divided into adaptable rooms within a grid of removable partitions. Large panels have been created so they can move around the home to create new spaces. The large windows that run all around the home can also be hidden to provide privacy with the use of large movable panels. This creation shows how the home has been designed to think about the future needs of the inhabitants through its flexibility of design.
Contemporary design needs to consider the occupants of the home and how lifestyle can change the way the home is used. Like this home, designers need to be pushing the boundaries of way of living and layout within the home and use of space to ensure that homes keep up with the needs of people.
Images & reference via: http://www.dezeen.com/2011/12/14/mima-house-by-mima-architects/
The Freedom Room is an Italian project all about finding a concept of living to act as a mean for social innovation, social housing and low cost living. The project ran to find how to improve social housing, hostels and jail cells. The project was completed with the help of Italian prison inmates. If a group of people should know about living in small spaces it would be prison inmates. Their cells are small closed spaces and they themselves would re design the space in their cells to adapt to the way they lived.
‘For its inhabitants such space has to be a kitchen, a room, an office, a playroom, a closet, a gym, a library, and much more all at the same time. A place that is continuously reinvented by those who live inside it.’ (The Freedom Room 2013)
This idea lead to the introduction of the Freedom Room project. The jail inmates helped design ways of low cost living, and spaces that were multifunctional and adaptable, whilst keeping to their cell’s size of 4 x 2.7meters. The space included a bedroom, kitchen, closet, bathroom, storage room, workspace, living room and a gym. The layout and use of space designed by the inmates shows that you can live in a small space. They have done so day in, day out, and the result being a tighter understanding into how we can all live in smaller spaces.
The result of this project has shown how micro-housing can be a good way to improve social housing and be an answer to the housing demands. The designs are also found to be good alternatives to hostels and jail cells. It has shown in pushing for answers to social problems design is the answer and economic problems and urban crowding are large aspects that effect people and thinking about results through design can help solve them.
Images and reference via: http://www.freedomroom.org
Mima House
The Freedom Room
T r e n d P r e d i c i t o n C a s e S t u d i e s
