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SMALL SPACES
The walls are closing in! What are we going to do?
Today we are going to find out some solutions to manage living in small spaces.
During a college vacation, I spent just a couple of nights living in a sailboat. The boat was docked in a marina slip in Panama City, Florida. It was a 90’s style 40 foot made by Hunter. The boat was sleek with a low profile clean top deck and long horizontal strip windows. When below the windows represented something similar to a clerestory.
The boat was about 10′ wide at is widest dimension which of course got narrower as it went towards the bow. There were 2 bathrooms, two bedrooms, a dining area, separate kitchen, a desk with navigation equipment and a seating area. All of this within less than 300 sf.
300 sf is really small. I think the boat could have done away with one bathroom and used the space to grow the other. But, everything had it’s place.
Of course you accessed all this from a hatch toward the aft of the boat and down a ships ladder. The ladder served as the cover for the diesel engine. If you unhook the ladder you could gain access behind a panel to the engine. Behind the engine was the aft cabin you could get to the cabin from either side of the ladder and engine compartment. One direction took you through the shower the other took you through the kitchen.
The kitchen was a small L shape that overlooked the ‘living room and dining area. The back of the kitchen counter peninsula was the seating banquet dining table. The table was supported by the column which supported the mast and main sail. This ran all the way down to the keel of the boat. That is a large weight down towards the bottom of the boat. Almost envision a dolphin swimming upside down. It keeps the sails from tipping the boat completely over.
You could pull a cable and the table would drop level with the bench seating and pull the back cushions off and you have a third bed. Across from the table was a built in sofa with storage above and below. of course the banquet had storage above and in it as well.
Behind the sofa towards the aft on the shower side was the desk. This looked like the cockpit of a plane. nobs and buttons everywhere. Mostly they controlled lighting and engine gauges. The desk was cool. It had a flip top for maps and pencils. what ever else you might need. Below that desk was an area for nautical maps. looked like a wine rack.
At the bow or front of the boat was the triangular shaped smaller bedroom. The bed took up the entire room. It was elevated with storage below. The best part of this room was the roof hatch. When you were down below in the main cabin, because of the design of the boat the windows were minimal. All the walls were being used for storage.
This roof hatch was the best connection to the exterior. One of the first things I did was hook up the wind scoop. It was a small mini sail that that you connect to the sail guidelines above the boat and has a stick that keeps it from pulling out of the window and blowing away. The cool thing that it does is it funnels the air directly down into the boat. If you open the back windows you get a nice draft through the cabin that makes it much more comfortable to sleep.
As you lay there and look up through this large roof hatch you can see the stars and feel the breeze. It was pretty awesome. Of course, I was lucky because it was not raining.
Those days that I stayed on the boat, I never had the feeling of claustrophobia or really an sense of being cramped in a small space. It was fun. I think the thing that made it so enjoyable was its uniqueness. Its details. The level of design that went into each item and space. Decades of boat design, evolving and evolving over time.
Being inside a boat made of fiberglass you might think the interior would be cold and plastic. It was not anything like that. It would be hard to find any portion of that interior that was not covered with a finely sanded clear coated teak. The floor was made of a series of 2″ strips with one 1/4″ lighter strip of wood. The wood was so intricately installed and perfectly sanded. You could slide across it with bare feet and never get a splinter.
The cabinets were the same way. Each one had a light that would illuminate the entire cabinets so seeing what you were after was simple. There were so many details in the Hunter.
So how does this translate to architecture?
The key to this boats design was its efficiency and elegance. So how do you stay efficient and elegant at the same time. It comes down to design and craftsmanship.
With a small space you have to be clever with design. You have to be flexible and in some ways more creative with the use of space. Your often dealing with not only a small space but an awkward space.
You might be forced to position a bed against a sloping attic wall or have that strange space that is just perfect for that one thing. Or even custom build furniture to enhance the space you have. Building in storage into a head board or elevating a bed and allowing for storage below can be a great use of space. It’s hard to find off the shelf items like those. They really need to be designed and constructed for the space.
When your working with smaller spaces you will have more flexibility to budget more for built-ins and custom millwork simply because the space is smaller. You will be able to invest in more interesting materials just because you need less of them.
For instance the traditional kitchen of a modern home might have 20+ linear feet of counter. In your tiny well designed kitchen, you might only have 6. Purchasing a higher grade granite or going with something unique like caesar stone or even concrete can really add something interesting to the space. But before you begin exploring materials you really need to do 2 things.
The first is to understand and come to grips with your priorities. Spend some time to look at how you live your life. What are your interest, what are your needs for a space. What do you use on a regular basis and what’s not necessary. What kind of spaces do you need. If you had a large kitchen with a bar would you usually eat at the bar or at a table. Or do you often entertain around a dinner table.
The second is to think of your space holistically. What I mean by that is how can we create multiple uses from the same amount of area. How do we circulate through the space. How do we create private and not so private spaces when your limited.
When it comes to working within existing spaces you might not always have the luxury of modifying the space to fit your needs but if you can you should think of the space as a clean slate. Take out some paper and start to draw the exterior walls. Then possibly with the help of your architect look at the structure. examine what might be load bearing and what would have to stay verse the walls that are strictly not needed.
You may have to remove some walls.
The more volume and open your plan can be, the more flexible the spaces will become. You can being to use the space more effectively if not confined to predefined walls.
The sailboat had one thing lacking. Other than the one large hatch that allowed me to star gaze, the windows were minimal. If you have the opportunity, open the space up to the outdoors. Creating that connection will allow the room to expand exponentially even if only visual. Having an exterior deck or balcony is even better.
Now that you have opened all the walls up and added as much light into the spaces as possible you may be asking yourself where am I going to store all my stuff. This is the hard part, kind of. I guess it really depends on you and your desired lifestyle. Because of the limited space, you really have to approach the storage from two directions. The first, Is what I am storing necessary and worth keeping. This might be the time to rid yourself of those clothes that don’t fit, or those books you did not enjoy, or even thing people have given you as gifts that you just don’t need.
I have a tendency to get or I have a lot of hobbies. Small spaces are not conducive to lots of hobbies. The clutter can add up and be constantly distracting and stressing. If everything has its place you will not have that issue. So the second thing is that you must find a place for everything. You need to be organized!
You will be surprise how many hidden spaces or uniques spaces you will find to keep things when you need to get organized in a small space. We tend to be more creative. The items in our life are sometimes forced to be in the open and available for our guest to see. So, they get highlighted. They become a feature of our house and start to project our personality. I find that in small spaces, I get a better sense of who a person is than when I visit someones larger home.
The spaces are always unique and individual. More artful and sensitive to what matters. The spaces tend to reflect experiences rather than products. It’s hard to explain, but if you visit a person living in a small space and a person living in a larger more traditional American sized space, the one in the smaller space will have twice the number of photos of family and friends. Sometimes covering entire walls with photos. Creating wall paper of memories.
Its fascinating to me. I want to experience this more often.
I wanted to end this episode with a quote from the Architect Philip Johnson the designer of many historically great structures. The most outstanding to me is the glass house. I believe he said then when critiquing the Architecture trends of the day:
“Architecture is the art of how to waste space.”
