Mind the Beginner

I’ve been looking into minimalist homes a lot lately and at how the Japanese tackle this challenge in particular. In my previous article on minimalist living I identified what it is exactly that we need to live somewhere, for convenience I’ll give the list again:

A bed

A desk/table and chair

A toilet

A shower

A kitchen

A place to store our 100 items

I still feel this list is all we need. We could simplify and make the bed a mattress on the floor and the kitchen a gas stove on the table but that would bemore like camping. Nobody said that minimalist living should be hardship right?
The Japanese have gotten this minimalistic living down to an art form. With the congestion of the urban area’s plots to build a home are getting smaller and smaller. They even have a name for it: kyosho jutaku (狭小住宅). If we let babelfish loose on that phrase we end up with the translation “narrow small residential” which does seem fitting. In proper English I’d like to stick with micro home or micro living.

These homes being so small don’t let you live a cluttered life. Anything out of place will become an obstruction somehow.

Now I was in the Ikea last Friday and they’re advertising with a 37 square meter home. To bad they had to stuff it with all kinds of “nifty storage solutions” which made it a tight fit. Storage was everywhere and everything had several functions it seemed. I never thought that in 37 square meters I could still feel like a sardine. You couldn’t swing a cat in there. I bet they never heard of the 100 items challenge.

These Japanese micro homes take living small to a new level. The Ikea apartment was 37 square meters. The plots the Japanese build these houses on are no bigger than 30 square meters. Granted they do get to add a few floors if they want but still. Some of these homes sacrifice a part of the plot to accommodate a parking space for their car as well.
To get an idea of pricing over there. The average-of-the-average Tokyo married couple may be looking to buy a brand-new 70 square meters apartment at a cost of ¥45,000,000 and above. (That’s over $456,000.- dollars). With those prices it’s not strange that micro living is so popular in cities like Tokyo and Kobe.
Although not all the homes in this list will fit in such a plot I found a few examples of minimalist homes that I’d really like to share with you.

The first one is Tadao Ando’s 4×4 house. A concrete tower rising 4 stories above ground and a basement below. It stands 13.4m tall. The “three cubes” that make up this house are roughly 4×4x4 meters in size. The top cube is offset one meter in both of the horizontal axis. Actually on this building the plot was exactly 5×5 meters. The total floor space is 117.19 m2
“Each floor of the house is used for a different activity: storage in the basement, access and service on the ground floor, bedroom on the first floor, study on the second, kitchen and dining room on the top floor. The spaces are almost completely enclosed on three sides, while they are open on the fourth facing towards the sea.”
The amount of light that comes in through the massive windows is staggering and the view is to die for. I can definitely see myself live in this house. More than enough room to store the 100 things. Park the motorcycle under the overhang of the top cube and enjoy sunsets over the sea with a good book and a glass of sake.

On to our second home, this one is bigger than the 30 square meter plot but I think it’s really to nice not to share:
The Garden and Sea House by Takao Shiotsuka
If white is not your color you’re in trouble with this one. Again, this house has a view of the sea. There is a lot of glass here, from floor to ceiling. Combined with a completely white “garden” this house has the feel of a sacred place. The total floor space is 237.14m2. Quite large actually, although it’s not living on a small footprint it definitely is a minimalist home.

The third home in our list is Satoshi Kurosaki’s Slit. A very thin house on a narrow and long plot squeezed in between two other plots. 85 m2 living area if I’m correct. Not much to say about this one. It was designed for a family of three who needed (job) to live in the city but on a tight budget. It’s simply amazing how much can be done with so little room.

I’d like to give you a bonus house toend this post: Ghost by Jin Otagiri. It’s white, it’s minimal, it’s empty. Either you love it or you hate it. No words, just a picture:

You can find inspiration everywhere and today it came in the form of an article on architecture. A special about small living spaces which made me think about my current living situation.

How much space does a human need to be able to live and thrive? If we take a look in the direction of third world countries people live in very confined spaces with little to no comfort at all. At the other end of this spectrum we have the mansions that stand on huge estates, getting the mail from the beginning of the driveway is a ten minute drive. Going to the toilet requires deciding which one to use this time.

So, what is enough room and what is to much? I don’t think it’s about the number square feet, you have but more centered on what is available in the living space. An advantage of small living is that you’re limited in the amount of things you can own. The 100-items challenge I wrote about earlier would almost be vital to keeping a tidy home. Yes, I see this as an advantage. I’m a minimalist after all.

As a college student most of us experience living in tight quarters, but after college it’s off to a good job, getting a nice house and sometimes having so much space we don’t know what to do with it all. The typical Dutch house has a living room, kitchen and toilet downstairs and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. There might even be a converted attic on top of it all. Converted to bedroom, office or something else. All this space can be rented to a single person. Just imagine that, 3-4 bedrooms for one. Do we actually need all this? Such a waste of space. And what’s worse, we end up filling all those rooms with stuff just so it doesn’t feel so empty. That’s where things go wrong. We feel the need to have all those rooms, to have all those things we stuffed in every room.

But what do we really need?

• A bed
• A desk/table and chair
• A toilet
• A shower
• A kitchen
• A place to store our 100 items

All those things an be found in even the tightest living quarters. Think of mobile homes, ship’s cabins, trailers. If we leave out the kitchen we can even add the hotel room to our list.

What are the implications of all this? If we realize that we don’t actually need all that room we can live smaller and much more mobile. I found a few great examples of small living that I would like to share with you:

The Micro Compact home

The rotor house (Click the picture and be amazed)

And if you don’t mind living in something that resembles a garbage truck

All these homes are tiny but have everything I mentioned in the list. The rotor house isn’t mobile but has the most room. The Micro Compact can even be airlifted, the garbage truck.. ..well it’s a truck. Do we need more? Living in a small home does mean you have to change your mindset about what a home actually is. And with kids it’s not a good idea but if you’re alone or there is just the two of you it’s very doable. You might even start to like this way of living.

Take a look around when you’re home and wonder. How much space do you have and do you really need it all? I know living so small isn’t for everyone. Few people would be happy in the small places I just showed you, but it’s something I’d like to offer you so you can think about it. Really go take a look around in your home and wonder if you really need it all. I’d like to hear about your findings.

Not only your home offer ways to implement minimalism, there are more places to minimalize. Over the next few weeks I want to write more articles on this subject and try and show you why I like minimalism so much and what the effects of it are on our mental state and piece of mind.

If you liked this article you might also like living on a small footprint, minimalist living: the Japan edition or One step to creating a minimalist home

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