Small Space, But Living Large

Gary Chang, an architect based in Hong Kong, has turned the 32 square meters apartment he grew up in (and shared with his family of six) into a spatially flexible single-occupancy unit over the course of his 30 years living there. Employing a system of movable wall/furniture/storage pieces, Chang is effectively able to arrange his apartment into 24 different room configurations. It is, by far, one of the most creative high-density living experiments I've come across.

Chang's set up reminds me of the opening scene in "An American in Paris." In his undersized Parisian flat, Gene Kelly goes about his morning business, a choreographed routine revealing a hyper efficient system of hidden furniture, strategically placed around the apartment to enable optimal utilization of a supremely limited space. This consists primarily of raising a bed arranged on pulleys up into its position of disuse, in order to make room for a folded breakfast table and chair pulled out of the out of the closet. While operating the pulley mechanism, Kelly's character makes efficient use of his time by washing his face with a towel, which had been hanging from one of the bed's springs and became available when the bed was raised. A mundane routine, artfully elegant in it's execution.

Kelly's character, a by-the-book impecunious painter seeking inspiration in Paris, lives where he lives, and the way he lives, presumably as a result of fiscal destitution. Chang, on the other hand, is a well-established practicing architect, and chooses to live in his family's old residence. Drawing from his close-quarters upbringing, during which his entire family occupied the apartment he now inhabits alone, he learned to value the constraints of compact space. The architectural evolution of the apartment over the course of his life is traced in a book, "My 32m^2 Apartment," in which it's revealed that Chang's first architectural mock-up was a re-design of the apartment he drew as a teenager. (He gave himself his own room.) Functionality and flexibility are the rule.

The design of the apartment in its current configuration is impressive in and of itself, but what I find most interesting is that it's the result of an unusually long engagement the architect has had with this particular space. From both first and secondhand experience, I know that it is not unusual for an architect to turn his or her own house into a lifelong design experiment. In Chang's case, it seems pretty clear that his fascination with and devotion to this particular apartment declares him an architect whose house has become a veritable extension of its inhabitant.

Here's a link to the article the New York Times wrote on the apartment. Chang's book can be found here.

Homier Than Thou: Meet the Boxhome.

I've been obsessing over this project for a few weeks now. It's some combination of the Boxhome's simplicity, extraordinarily thoughtful design, rational and spare use of materials, all combined into a near-perfect teeny tiny space. Unnecessary floor area is kept to a minimum, natural light is the primary source of interior illumination, and most of the furnishings are built in. There are four rooms: kitchen/dining area, bathroom, living room, bedroom.

bedroom & bathroom

exterior

side exterior

dining area

One of the things I find so fascinating about the Boxhome, even as a pre-fab, high-density living prototype (which it is), is that it draws from a wide variance of design ideologies, and marries them almost seamlessly. There are elements of Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion House -- energy efficiency, low-cost, and (theoretically) the opportunity for mass-production. In other elements, including a distinct vernacular aesthetic, craftsmanship detailing, and inventive use of space there's some pretty basic Wrightian overlap. On a different note, there's also an Ikea-esque sensibility: the lofty goal of tasteful, interesting, and affordable design. It's an easy comparison to draw, considering the project's design team was led by Scandinavian architect Sami Rintala, but there it is just the same.

I love the idea as a high-density living alternative. Its not functionally efficient to the point of detachment, nor aesthetically efficient to the point of discomfort; the design is equal parts useful, beautiful, comfortable, economical, and, to an extent, ecologically benign. Not that this is the answer to everyone's prayers, but, well... that just seems like a lot of grace for a 19 square meter (205 square foot) structure.

Here's a link to the Dwell article that spurred my interest.

Welcoming to the Blogophere!

Dear Lily,

Welcome! Congratulations on successfully maneuvering your way into the mysterious realm of the interweb blogosphere. You may think that because so many have been able to find their way here much sooner than you, your discovery of this relatively well-trodden webternet path is less worthy of praise and exaltation. Not so! A contribution is a contribution, and it seems that your belief that you have something to chip in is as good a reason as any. Though you seem to intend for this blog to be nothing more than a collection of things you think are "pretty freaking RAD!", we here at the Blogosphere Command Center realize that you are young and show great potential; our hope is that, with time, you will undergo some sort of clarion transformation which might then enable yourself to grow and learn a great deal from your experiences with us.

Best of luck with your blag-a-rific endeavors and thanks oodles,

The Blogosphere

______________________________________

Hmmm. I have somehow ended up not on the world wide web, but the widely worldly web. The two are (understandably) quite easily confused, but the latter tends to have much higher expectations of its contributors than the former. Well, here I am, there's no turning back now. Maybe the pressure of my "potential" to achieve a "clarion transformation" will actually reap some fruit. Eh? Eh? I suppose time will tell.

I will start with an explanation of the story behind this blog. First of all, I have a couple of friends who have started very interesting blog-like things, which are usually centered around some sort of hobby, or project-oriented, or something thematic or purposeful or just for fun. After reading a handful of such blogs, I decided that with all the great things I find (or, much more often, that other people direct my attention to) on the internet that I can contribute just as well as any old bean: a collection of all these interesting, tid-bitty thinger dingers that one with a certain amount of time on his or her hands is bound to comes across.

The visual makeup of this blog so far is a pretty fair testament to that: a sort of coagulation of a few liquidy, elusive prompts that, combined, start to solidify into something a little more meaningful. The title of this blog, "Ich Habe Genug," is a borrowed phrase from "The Principles of Uncertainty." "Principles," a monthly illustrated column by artist Maira Kalman, which I subsequently became a religious reader of when it ran in the online edition of the New York Times my freshman year of college, was a gloriously hodgepodge-y, yet utterly fluent, work of genius. (A collection of the columns was also released in book form last fall.)

Kalman's ability to pull together twenty unrelated thoughts, visuals, and experiences into one imprecise yet beautiful vertical storyboard -- and have a new one ready on the first Wednesday of every month is enviable. This panel is from the December 2006 column, which I'm pretty sure happens to have been the first one I ever read:

For me, this translates as a covert, underlying principle to everything I do: deliberately repositioning myself not to "need" unnecessarily. That said, necessity is largely in the eye of the beholder, so ideas of "want" and "need" and "use" and "purpose" are always, and inevitably uncertainly, blending together. Thus, the challenge. But more on that later.

The subtitle of this blog is a reference to Jane Jacobs, whose first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was an incredibly influential critique of contemporary planning methodology. In 1961, Jacobs pointed out that urban renewal projects largely worked against the nature of how people live, destroying communities by pulling apart the dynamic fabric of cities. Jacob's work gave rise to a whole host of new planning thought -- such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth -- and many U.S. cities have since adopted progressive design policies inspired by the themes promoted in her book. My hometown, Portland, Oregon, happens to be one such city, widely considered to have implemented some of these ideas better than most.

J.J.

My dad, who has been a city planner in Portland for almost fifteen years, took me to hear Jacobs lecture when I was in high school. My collegiate path has been greatly informed by these readings and thus, true to form, Jacobs' effects on me are onion-y (they've got layers).

Last but not least, the background image. This is a photograph of an architectonic landscape installation by Sami Rintala, a Scandinavian architect, who I very recently became interested in while reading about a 205 square-foot pre-fab house he led a team of architects and builders in designing and constructing in a back issue of Dwell magazine. I'll likely write a full post on it soon, so we'll just leave that there for now.

Anywho, that's this blog. It'll probably continue to run along similar lines; commentary on anything else I come across that I'd like to pay some attention too. So look at that! Blogosphere's already doing it's thing!