Functionality
The Cabanon is a fully equipped apartment of 6.89m² including two infrared saunas and a whirlpool bath. It is organized into 4 spaces, extravagantly different in materials and heights: a 3m-high living room, a 1.14m-high bedroom with plenty of storage, a toilet with a rain-shower, and a spa. The Cabanon is probably the smallest apartment in the world; certainly the smallest with a spa. Its dimensions are H: 3m, W: 1,97m, L: 3,6m. It has a 6m² window overlooking the city.

Creativity
The Cabanon is a fascinating manifestation of the specific desires of its owners for their second home. They specially wished to have a rain-shower, two infrared saunas, and a whirlpool bath. They wanted a small bed to sleep close, and a bench along the window. They didn’t need a large kitchen as they often eat out in weekends, but they wanted to have the possibility of cooking. The Cabanon is a temple in the proportions of its owners who became its modulors. B and B’s heights are 1,72m and 1,78m. The spaces at the Cabanon are dimensioned according to the height and width they need to perform their functions.

The Cabanon is an experiment in space for B and B -the architects and the owners, who increasingly saw personal growth in voluntary reduction. However, this reduction was never understood as austerity. The Cabanon is of the most luxurious smallness, an “epicurean reduction”. The four spaces in the Cabanon have been shaped based on standard products: the bedroom was designed with a specific mattress in mind; the spa according to the bathtub length; the kitchen based on the mini-fridge depth, in order to avoid the need of customized objects, but rather the other way around: the Cabanon would adapt to standard and affordable products.

Innovation and Eco-social Impact
The Cabanon is the conversion of an existing attic used for storage into a living space. It is located on the top floor of a 1950’s residential building in the centre of Rotterdam. Many of the materials and items used in the Cabanon come from outlets or second-hand stores. The Cabanon makes clear that different rooms with different sizes and functions might not need the same height. The Cabanon seemed to get bigger the more programs we added. The adaptation of heights made it possible.

The Cabanon could help optimizing housing and costs but in no way does it advocate towards the reduction of surfaces as the only strategy towards affordable housing, neither it pretends to become the house of the future, however we can extrapolate some of Cabanon’s strategies in order to make current housing production better and cheaper, such as:
-the optimisation of space–optimisation not understood as ‘reduction’ but as ‘maximisation’ of the possibilities of one space;
-the modulation of heights of certain spaces in order to superpose some functions;
-the detachment towards possession and consumerism, so we are less inclined to buy and accumulate useless objects that clutter our houses and minds.