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Project Details:

Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Architect: STAR Strategies + Architecture / @star_strategies_architecture

Architect: BOARD / @bureau_of_architecture_r_d

Footprint: 75 square feet

Builder: Midwinter Timmerwerk & Decoratie

Photographer: Ossip van Duivenbode / @ossipvanduivenbode

From the Architect: “The Cabanon is a fully equipped apartment of 75 square feet including two infrared saunas and a whirlpool bath. It is organized into four spaces, extravagantly different in materials and heights: a 10-foot-high living room, a 4-foot-hight bedroom with plenty of storage, a toilet with a rain-shower, and a spa. The spa is the most enclosed space of the Cabanon: the room within a room. The Cabanon is probably the smallest apartment in the world; certainly the smallest with a spa.

“The Cabanon is the conversion of an existing attic used for storage into a living space. It is located on the top floor of a 1950s residential building in the center of Rotterdam.

“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 will use it. It half the size of Le Corbusier’s unit and—unlike his Cabanon—fully autonomous and designed for a couple.

“The Cabanon is an experiment in space for Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer, the architects and the owners, who increasingly saw personal growth in voluntary reduction. However, this reduction was never understood as austerity. The Cabanon is of the most luxurious smallness, an ‘epicurean reduction.’

“The Cabanon is a fascinating manifestation of the specific desires of its owners for their second home. They wanted a small bed to sleep close, and a bench along the window. They didn’t need a large kitchen as they love to eat out during the weekend, but they wanted to have the possibility of cooking nonetheless. They wished to have a rain-shower, two infrared saunas, and a whirlpool bath.

“The spaces at the Cabanon are dimensioned according to the height and width of the owners as well as the size of standard products. The bedroom was designed with a specific mattress in mind; the spa according to the bathtub length; the kitchen based on the mini-fridge depth. Instead of necessitating customized objects, the Cabanon adapts to standard and affordable products.

"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 does it pretend to become the 'house of the future.'"