The World’s Smallest Home and DIY Bauhaus Furniture
What does a 1 square meter home look like? Actually, it doesn’t look like much–it’s an A-framed box on casters that could easily be mistaken as a dog house.
German designer Bo Van Le-Metnzel made this 1 square meter home not so much as a practical exercise, but as a riff on the concept of home. As a Laotian refugee whose sense of place may be more mutable than most, this concept is near to his heart. His structure asks what does home mean? Are there strictures that dictate what home is and is not? Can a home be rotated on its back?
Just as interesting as the nano-home is Le-Metnzel’s website where he gives instructions on how to build high quality, Bauhaus-inspired furniture. The name of the site, Hartz IV Möbel, alludes to the German welfare system (Hartz IV) and furniture (Möbel)–i.e. welfare furniture. Le-Metnzel’s tagline is “Build More, Buy Less.” He aims to offer high-quality design to anyone who wants it; his designs are meant to require minimal skill and tools. Some of his plans include the €24 Chair—an elegant Bauhaus-style chair that can be made for €24 —and the Berlin Stool, which is a modular stool, storage container or toddler desk (both below).
Le-Metnzel’s work is both aesthetic and social, as he explained to BMW/Guggenheim Lab website:
When I did the blueprints for the furniture, for me it was clear that the issue of furniture—a chair—this is not an issue of design. This is a social issue. If you have less money, does it mean that there’s no chance to live largely with nice furniture? My answer to this is no. The smallest apartment can be very fine if you know how to display it, and you know how to put the furniture inside.
Unfortunately for the Anglophonic, most of—if not all—of his plans and his book are in German. Though a good translator link might get you pretty far.
If you have any experience with Le-Metnzel’s designs (or similar DIY projects), let us know.
Images credit: Hartz IV Möbel