Architectural Spectacle: The Thinnest House in the World

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The Keret House

In a four-foot-wide crack between two building in Warsaw, Poland, architect Jakub Szczesny has designed the world’s thinnest house. He build a series of vertical spaces into the void between two existing buildings that represent two historical epochs and made it a functional living space. There may be micro-apartments in San Francisco and New York, but this tiny house takes all the attention as a creative and remarkable vision of architectural design. It is wedged in an alleyway between two apartment blocks and is in the shape of a triangle which is 33 feet long and 5 feet wide at its widest point. The narrowest point is just 3 feet! It has true industrial aesthetic, resembling a Tetris block. The frame is made of a series of metal triangles that form a two-story lattice.

It has been called the Keret House after the main inspiration, Israeli writer Etgar Keret who is famous for writing his short stories that are particularly short. Szczesny was also inspired because of the housing crunch facing many major cities around the world, Poland being one of them. There is currently too little living space being built. He suggests that we don’t actually need that much living space to live in and we should consider building smaller scaled, cheaper housing units.

The home provides a mere 150 square feet of living space. Many would consider this to be a tight fit especially when only stretching one way, but the architect who envisioned it insists that he hasn’t skimped on the very basics. Jakub Szczesny says “It contains all necessary amenities such as a micro-kitchen, mini-bathroom, sleeping cubicle and tiny work area, all accessible via ladders.” It took him 3 years to build this narrow structure. It is being used as a space for artist residencies from five to seven days at a time. Due to the size, it cannot be considered a full-time residence.

Light & Space

Squeezed between two buildings, one might imagine the space to be dark and claustrophobic on the interior, yet Szczesny counteracted the issue by providing plenty of light. He has installed a polycarbonate roof that is essentially a skylight, open stairways and a wall of windows that enables maximum sunlight to shine through to the inside. The house is also set to hover about ten feet above the ground. A white interior also contributes to the airy feel. White walls may give the impression of an undecorated boring home, Szczesny creatively maximized the whiteness to make the space appear larger than it really is. The walls glow with the light from the translucent roof and facade.

Ingenious Design

The vertical use of space is pure ingenuity on the design aspect. The architect tells Co.Design that “It’s a rather ‘minimal existence unit,’ but I’ve done my best to fight for centimeters in table, seating, kitchenette, and corridor widths.” Its a masterpiece full of clever designs and functional aspects. The Keret House may look tiny but it is a fully functional living space because of such things as the entryway staircase, which folds up to double as the first floor’s actual flooring. Another ingenious aspect is the toilet modeled after the pluming system of a boat. The downside is that the teeny bathroom has a combined shower and toilet unit.

The woman from the department of architecture in the Wola district who was responsible for approving the building permit stated that she thought it would be impossible to build yet gave her acceptance just to see if it was, in fact, possible.

The Keret House was originally designed and built as an art installation, yet it will be lived in by none other than the man who inspired the artist, Etgar Keret. This tiny house holds the unofficial record as the thinnest house in the world, but there are many other quirky competitors. Other slim home designs include a 9-foot-wide, three-story residence in Brazil as well as the Wedge House in Scotland and a series of extremely narrow homes built in Japan. There are so many creative visions of over-the-top architectural structures that were once though to be impossible yet were successfully built only to grow in fame because of their ingenious design and aesthetics.