The Cabanon is a fully equipped apartment of 6.89m² including an infrared-sauna and a whirlpool-bath. It is organized into four spaces, extravagantly different in materials and heights: a 3m-high living-room, a 1.14m-high bedroom with plenty of storage, a toilet with a rain-shower, and a spa.

The Cabanon is probably the smallest apartment in the world; certainly the smallest with a spa.

The Cabanon is the conversion of an existing storage into a living space. It is located on the top floor of a 1950’s residential building in Rotterdam. Its inside dimensions are H: 3m, W: 1,97m, L: 3,6m. It has a 6m² window overlooking the city.

The Cabanon takes its name from the eponymous cabin of Le Corbusier and it has also been conceived by the same architects who will use it. It is half the size of Le Corbusier’s unit and – unlike his Cabanon – fully autonomous and designed for a couple.

It is a manifestation of the 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 weekends. They wished to have a rain-shower, infrared saunas, and a whirlpool bath.

The Cabanon is an experiment in space; a temple in the proportions of its 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 could be a model for optimizing housing and costs but in no way does it advocate towards the reduction of surfaces as the only strategy towards affordable housing. However, we can extrapolate some of its strategies in order to make current housing production better and cheaper. Some of these are: the optimisation of space–optimisation not understood as ‘reduction’ but as ‘maximisation’ of the possibilities of one space; the modulation of heights of certain spaces in order to superpose some functions; and the detachment towards possession and consumerism, so we are less inclined to buy and accumulate useless objects that clutter our houses (and minds).

The Cabanon is not only a theory, it is a paradigm.