

World’s narrowest house by Jakub Szczesny - mcenedella
http://www.dezeen.com/2012/10/31/worlds-narrowest-house-by-jakub-szczesny/

======
jorleif
Pretty cool, it seems to me that the reasons to have large spaces are mostly
1) psychological (this house feels claustrophobic) 2) storage of stuff.
Imagine if we somehow managed to get rid of the second one. For people working
from laptops this is already how it works, but for homes I think it is
trickier. Of course there are people who live as techno-nomads already, but
they have to swear by a kind of minimalist lifestyle that most people don't
want, or that is economically infeasible. How quickly would one need stuff in
order to make a JIT lifestyle feasible? For example: Need to host a dinner
party? Rent a space with dining facilities and equipment that you need. I
think the biggest bottleneck is that you can get these spaces, but you need to
sift through many options, and you don't get the equipment that you would have
chosen yourself. But what if you could store your preferences somehow
virtually, and get the equipment you need exactly when you wanted it.

~~~
netcan
>>"* Need to host a dinner party? Rent a space with dining facilities and
equipment that you need.*"

I think realistically if you don't have the space, you don't host the dinner
party. Usually not. The whole cost-benefit-convenience-sunk cost-etc balance
is completely different.

Someone who likes to cook and host might spend $75k on kitchen fittings,
appliances, crockery & such every 10 years. Say they host 5 dinner parties per
year. Would that person be wiling to spend only $25k on the kitchen & the
remaining $50k + consumables on hosting the 50 dinner parties? Probably not.
It's just different.

The JIT equivalent is not going to be renting a venue for a dinner party. It's
going to be going to a restaurant or a bar.

~~~
jorleif
> The JIT equivalent is not going to be renting a venue for a dinner party.
> It's going to be going to a restaurant or a bar.

Yes, exactly, my post was clearly very unclear. I was not trying to say "this
is how we all live in the future", but rather, "how might we enable nice
living in smaller apartments".

So I was trying to get at why one wants a big place. So why is this so, and is
this the only mode of operating. Business usually rents space rather than owns
it, but it was not always so. I'm wondering if one could make the own/rent
equation more fine-grained. I'm thinking of some kind of personalized space
rental. Like you store your data in the cloud, you could similarly store some
of your stuff in the cloud, and only call it in when you actually need it.

Currently it is not too uncommon for people to collaboratively consume (e.g.
borrow/rent over the Internet) rarely used tools, such as hedge clippers or
lawn mowers. It does not make sense to do it for things one uses frequently
(e.g. spoons), but it might make sense for other things. I've come to realize
that I don't really need my living room on a daily basis, only for parties,
and for that it is way too small. Now I don't want a restaurant for our mostly
small children's parties, but could I somehow avoid owning the living room? If
there was a space nearby that I could rent, that would not work, since the
kitchen fittings, appliances etc. would not fit my needs or taste. It is
currently infeasible to personalize the space for each tenant, but it is still
interesting to consider. What if I had a storage space of stuff I owned
(perhaps collectively with other people), that I could call on demand. When
organizing the dinner party, the stored kitchen stuff would be retrieved from
the storage (which could be at several physical locations), and delivered to
the space. The organizing and moving costs are what makes it infeasible. The
organizing cost could be removed with clever software, the moving cost, not so
much.

------
tzs
That's pretty neat, but even though it is not quite as narrow, I think the
Richardson spite house is still my favorite narrow house: <http://www.nyc-
architecture.com/GON/GON005.htm>

~~~
damian2000
That was an awesome story, thanks.

------
jacquesm
That's at least 22 cm wider than this one:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bagatell/128061040/>

And that one _is_ inhabited. I wonder how the inhabitants schedule their days,
I can imagine they have to plan their evening ahead before getting into the
house to determine who goes first :)

~~~
praptak
This article says it's only the facade being that narrow, the other side is
somewhat wider: [http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/Article/the-
narrowest-...](http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/Article/the-narrowest-
house-in-amsterdam.htm)

~~~
wybo
True. Great for bringing it up.

As for why facades are so narrow in Amsterdam, if people wonder (there are
many more below 3 meters). It is because people used to have to pay property
taxes based on the width of the facade of their house.

(so the owners of the house in the article got a good deal by being able to
have a small facade for a wider house)

Maybe (not letting depth run wild either) something similar could be an
interesting way to ensure walkable cities ;-)

~~~
jacquesm
Amsterdam had lots of weird taxes. But how about a window tax? (London)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-
view/3578125/Whe...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-
view/3578125/When-politicians-go-mad-they-start-taxing-windows.html)

Something similar existed in nl as well, which resulted in many windows being
bricked in.

------
zalew
sadly, due to construction and safety laws, it's officially uninhabitable. it
can only serve a purpose of being an artistic instalation where one can stay
temporarily, but it won't be qualified as a house.

the first concepts were a bit different looking
[http://warszawa.gazeta.pl/warszawa/51,34885,12670651.html?i=...](http://warszawa.gazeta.pl/warszawa/51,34885,12670651.html?i=0)

~~~
olalonde
That's sad. In Hong Kong, this house would sell for a lot and would most
likely be legal.

~~~
zalew
Corridor width regulations and such are probably more tolerant in places with
limited land area like HK, but while I'm not an expert, I'm not so sure a
metal box on sticks would qualify as real estate in most parts of the
bureaucratic modern world.

------
nicholassmith
It's interesting that this is I think the 3rd article on tiny housing that has
bubbled up on HN recently. At the moment in the UK the government wants people
to buy houses, get on the market and so on, but in an area like London where
housing is pricey and space is at a premium people are going to start needing
to think up clever ways to use it at ground level, rather than building up and
up.

Of course, they're nigh on useless for family units, but as a first time buyer
property they'd probably be quite useful in terms of pricing (as long as they
don't get sold as 'designer apartment spaces') and in sensible land usage.

------
ecaroth
Just looking at the pictures makes me claustrophobic...

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its interesting what you can adapt to. I've got a small 'class B' motor home
(which is a converted van) and while it is quite small you get used to it on
long trips.

------
tedchs
In Charleston there is an impossibly narrow Charleston single house, built to
be not much wider than a single doorway. It is a pastiche of classic
Charleston building techniques, with three types of traditional roofing and
five types of siding.

[http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/controversial-...](http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/controversial-
flag-still-flying-from-spoleto-91/Content?oid=4085159)

------
aidos
While not the narrowest, this one in Hong Kong [0] makes really good use of
space by being able to move everything around.

[0]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak&t=1m39s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak&t=1m39s)

------
pkorzeniewski
I love tiny houses and I would like to live in such one day, I don't want to
spend fortune on building a huge house, maintaing it and cluttering with
useless stuff. Of course the house from link is too extreme as it's an aristic
installation, but I love the idea.

------
shn
It was enough for me to feel the claustrophobia to see those pictures. Clearly
not for everyone.

------
eungyu
There are many attempts at making compact houses. I think the genius of this
house is in making it narrow (short-width) without compromising the length,
which makes it actually habitable.

------
spikels
He didn't go far enough. The real challenge would be to approximate Flatland
where you are constrained (as much as humanly possible ) to two dimensions.
For example the desk in this home would not be allowed as a person could
occupy the same 2d space.

------
brunnsbe
Quite neat that the front door is horizontal and not vertical. :)

------
sown
I wonder what the widest house is like? Perhaps the same house?

------
frozenport
Is there a shower?

~~~
dagw
Looks like it from the pictures

------
bejar37
Nq

