Most people prefer doing things more efficiently, but that does not necessarily apply to living spaces. As a graduate student, I spend most of my time in a small office with three other graduate students or out and about. I go home mostly to just sleep. For me, a large living space has very little value, and it furthermore has the cost of:
- having to clean it,
- having to pay for the extra space directly via rent payment, and
- having to pay for the extra space indirectly via extra electricity used for heating and cooling.
Thus, I was intrigue by the book Nano House (Amazon link here). However, I end up disappointed after perusing the book.
The main disappointment comes from that of expectations. I envisioned this book to provide examples of houses that use space efficiently and discuss how to work in necessities like bathroom and kitchens into a complete package. In designing small houses, it is easy to have a small space for a bed, but fitting in things like bathroom, showers, and kitchens are much more difficult. Instead, the narrative of the book reads like a catalog - with superficial and detach. Furthermore, for many of these houses, I do not have a good sense of how everything fit together due to the lack of floor plans for most houses. The pictures are nice, but it does not give me a complete picture of the house. I cannot even tell if most of these houses have bathrooms.
My personal favorites are the One+MiniHouse (pg52, more info here, including showing the kitchen and bathroom) and the Roll-IT (pg78, more info here, seeming to have no kitchen or bathroom). But I have come across other good nano homes as well - two of which are:
I also find Tata’s nano home concept encouraging – particular the possibility of providing lower income people with cheap and practical living spaces (more info here).