New Ideas for Small Spaces

At a recent conference, international architects explained their ideas for designing and planning compact, shared, and flexible housing to meet the needs of today's households.

1 minute read

October 2, 2009, 6:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Tomoyuki Utsumi of Milligram Architectural Studio in Tokyo presented his experience in creating homes in Japan:

"A house, he noted, is no longer exclusively a home: changes in the nature of work have created the need for houses to accommodate offices, while owner-occupiers of small-scale multi-family apartment buildings often have space requirements that change over time. Utsumi showed examples of the use of cloth to divide space, apartment buildings where a household can easily grow to absorb more units, and even a building where the entire interior structure was mobile."

Thursday, October 1, 2009 in Urban Omnibus

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