At a time when housing is a hot political topic, it may seem perverse of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum to commission seven architects to design small houses, yet the result is a fascinating assembly of the odd and intriguing that do touch on issues around housing. The idea of the private retreat, the gazebo, the potting shed or the garden retreats of writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Edward Carpenter, is a well-established part of everyday culture. Over the centuries, hermits have found caves in which to hide away from the world.
Architects Build Small Spaces is an altogether more different project in exploring the way the building itself becomes a piece of sculpture that can be explored from both the inside and outside. The structures are scattered around the museum, some in galleries, one by a staircase. Taking up the idea of the tree house, Helen and Hard Architects from Norway have set their structure in the Victoria and Albert’s garden, using a number of Norwegian ash trees that appear to have been woven together with a roof made up of an intricate web of woven willow – an intriguing blend of the whimsical and real that elicits curiosity.
An important aspect of all the structures is their ability to promote the desire to investigate. One recurring theme is the maze-like inside, often involving stairs, dead ends and slightly claustrophobic spaces. A notable exception is Beetle’s House by Terunobu Fujimori (from Japan), a wooden retreat placed on stilt-like legs. Recalling the traditional Japanese tea house, once the small ladder has been climbed, the interior is a small, quiet room – not too comfortable, but ideal for meditation.
Far from the joys of emptiness is Rintala Eggertsson’s Ark, consisting of a reading tower standing in the well of the staircase leading to the National Art Library. The walls are built up of hundreds of shelves, filled with around 7,000 books. A spiral staircase in the centre enables visitors to browse the books. The spaces are small, although a number of cocoon-like booths offer opportunities to read at leisure. Knowledge rather than contemplation is the theme here.
More classical is the temple-like structure In Between Architecture by Studio Mumbai. With its stone-coloured bricks, it is aptly placed in a sculpture gallery where it seems perfectly at home. The interior, narrow corridors and dead ends evoke the tiny spaces of buildings too small for habitation and any sort of comfort, while providing some sort of shelter and privacy. It is based on the parasitic architecture that has emerged between existing structures in high-density urban centres such as Mumbai – in particular, the series of family dwellings that appeared between the warehouse buildings behind Studio Mumbai’s workshop. Despite its smart appearance, In Between Architecture is a chilling structure.
Other architects use less conventional materials. Sou Jujimoto’s Inside/Outside Tree is built up of transparent polygon sheets of acrylic stitched together with cable ties. In looking at the way inside and outside space can merge, the notion of privacy is challenged, although there is still a refuge to offer shelter.
Simpler but less engaging in its structure is Woodshed by Rural Studio, Auburn University, which offers a warm inside of golden wood, lit by wall lights. Like In Between Architecture, Woodshed is a response to regional shelters, in this particular case to the long-established history of creating affordable housing for low-income rural communities in Alabama.
High-density housing areas of urban Brazil are the starting point for Spiral Booths by Vazio S/A. The relationship between the series of inter-connecting booths set around a central spiral staircase and crowded housing may not be immediately apparent, but the dizzying interior climb evokes the notion of the high-rise, raising questions about any sense of calm.
