Great Design For Micro-Living

PSFK recently reported about the highlights of this year’s IDS 12 (Interior Design Show 12) in Toronto, which was all about micro-living. The exhibition featured all kinds of neat ideas to turn small spaces into great living environments. Six different Canadian design firms were each tasked with creating a concept room within a two-story structure built out of shipping containers.

As I said the exhibition mainly featured the micro-living theme, but also combined thoughts about sustainability, food, local heritage, and creative use of small places in general. A great example is the Lum.in.drop, a storage space concept for homeless people created by Ryerson School of Interior Design students (see picture above). It’s interesting to see what good design can do with spaces sized half a shipping container. Combining some of the ideas brought up in this expo one can live a very good life in smaller houses. One example is  ‘The Last Supper’, a dining room concept created by Rick Mugford and Caroline Robbie of Quadrangle:

“Meant to be tongue in cheek interpretation of the iconic religious image, this room creates a new dialog about modern dinner rituals and how a dining room might reflect them. The walls are wrapped with a mural depicting over-scale vegetables and fruit in a classical still-life painting style. Interspersed in the image are touches of modern life including a smartphone showing a text message conversation.”

The Last Supper’s dining room function can be easily combined with the conceptual kitchen and bathroom space called Mason by Ashley Rumsey and Stanley Sun, who pushed the idea of one-space-living to the limit:

“Their intention was to deconstruct the public and private spaces with a home in response to their functional properties instead of traditional usage. The designers carefully created a path for water which aims to make use of it more efficient. The sink and dining table are merged and water flows from a wash station of one end through a trough under dining pads at the other end. Eventually the water cascades into garden which also intersects with the bathroom, which is totally open. Mason drew inspiration from primitive rituals associated with the uses of these rooms and reinterpreted them from a modern viewpoint.”

We’ve written about all kinds of micro-dwellings on this blog in the past, not in the last place because they’re inspiring since they focus on down-sizing consumption. This exhibition came at the right moment — think about all people that can’t afford big apartments any more due to the crisis. Ryan Mitchell and his Tiny Life blog might also really like this.

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