Optimisation as Maximisation, Not Reduction: An Interview with Architects and Owners Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer
Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer are an impressive duo. Ramo is the director of STAR strategies + architecture founded in 2006, while Upmeye is the director of the Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD) and editor-in-chief of MONU Magazine. Each with their own architecture studio within a shared office space, the Rotterdam-based couple are also the owners of The Cabanon – a 7 square metre apartment that they designed together with the support of their offices. Equipped with an infrared sauna and whirlpool tub, The Cabanon is certainly unique and an interesting proposition in optimising small spaces. We spoke with Ramo and Upmeyer about The Cabanon, its influences, and their philosophy behind small space design.
Your design, The Cabanon, is in Rotterdam. What part of the city is it located in? What is that area like (i.e. is it residential, industrial? Are there lots of restaurants? Is it easy to get to)?
Bernd Upmeyer: The Cabanon is located on the top floor of a 1950s post-war residential building in the centre of Rotterdam. It’s surrounded by lively streets with plenty of cafes, restaurants, and shops on the ground floor. The area is mainly composed of residential blocks from the reconstruction period of Rotterdam, with some newer additions like the Cubic houses or the Markthal. Several residential high-rise buildings are also being built among the urban fabric of the 50s. The Central library and the Blaak market are just steps away.
The Cabanon is the conversion of an existing attic unit used for storage into a living space. How did you come across the space? Can you tell us a bit more about how it looked when you found it?
BU: We live on the second floor of the building that The Cabanon is in. Back in 2013, we saw a neighbour’s note in the lobby about selling a “space” of 7 m² in the building. We were very curious because we had no clue where this space could possibly be, so we called the same day, visited the next, and bought it immediately. It was quite a discovery to find this storage-like room on the top floor of our block.
We discovered that there are in total three such rooms in the building, which were apparently occupied by nurses in the 1950s during the housing crisis after the war. In the original plans, they were qualified as storages as they are too small to be called apartments – but they were equipped with a toilet, a sink, heating, warm water, electricity and the huge window.
From the beginning there was an intention to use them for something more than storage. When we bought it, it was not well maintained: some stucco pieces were falling from the walls, pipes were flying around… The previous owner did not use it often.
The Cabanon is small at 6.89 square metres. What was the process like for deciding it could be converted into a liveable apartment?
Beatriz Ramo: When we started designing The Cabanon, we never intended to make an apartment. We saw it as an “extra room” to our flat. From a pragmatic point of view, we actually needed a guest-room, but as this is just some days per year, it became the “placeholder” for what we desired: in my case, an infrared sauna, and for Bernd, a whirlpool bathtub. We therefore adapted the bedroom and kitchen (we wanted our guests to be able to prepare food if they wished) to work with those needs. If it had been designed as a mini-apartment from the start, we would have probably prioritized extra storage or a bigger living-room, but it has its own unique programme and space allocation…
You mentioned that you took a lot of inspiration from Le Corbusier at the Côte d'Azur when designing this space. Can you tell us a little more about that process?
BR: As Le Corbusier did, we also experimented with minimal surfaces for living. Le Corbusier referred to his Cabanon as his “château sur la côte d’azur”. He saw a form of “luxury” in the very minimal dimensions and austerity of his cabin. We do not have the côte d’azur in front, so we created our own spa.
Our Cabanon, like his, was not designed to be used as a permanent house, however unlike his, our Cabanon is fully autonomous and designed for a couple. In his project, he used his own modulor system, while we were our own modulors – modulating each space according to the height and width we need to perform a function. We, as Le Corbusier, integrated as much as possible built-in furniture because this is a very practical solution for small spaces and made use of vivid colours.
What were some must-have features in the home when designing? Were you able to include them all? Is there anything you had to leave out that you would’ve liked to have had?
BU: The “number 1” must-have was the spa with the whirlpool bathtub and the two infrared saunas. Second, was the guest room. By adapting the heights of each space to what we strictly needed we managed to fit everything in it. There was nothing we had to leave behind, on the contrary, we ended up adding much more that we intended initially.
What is your favourite element of the completed design?
BR: We both love the spa room – the room within a room. When you are inside the spa and the door is closed you almost forget how you entered. There are no sounds from the outside, you are relaxing in a space entirely cladded with black marble, lights can be dimmed… It feels very special.
What role does natural light play in this space?
BU: The Cabanon has only one window, but its surface is almost as big as The Cabanon itself, so daylight is abundant. The spaces in The Cabanon are organised vertically facing the window, and zoned based on how much natural light they require. The living and bedroom area, for example, is located directly in front of the large window. In the most enclosed space, the spa, daylight (if desired) finds its way through a little ‘window’ camouflaged within the marble tiles that opens towards the kitchen.
Can you tell us a bit more about your choice of colours and materials in terms of how you divided the space and created zones?
BR: We wanted to “work” as little as possible while enjoying The Cabanon. We didn’t like the idea of having to unfold the bed every time we wanted to use it. To our surprise, The Cabanon started feeling bigger after we subdivided it into four rooms, so we decided to emphasise this division even more by choosing very different materials and colours for each space.
In The Cabanon you are unavoidably very close to the different surfaces, therefore one gets to see them fairly detailed. That is why we wanted to add rich textured materials to the surfaces. The choice of cladding each of the surfaces of one space with the same material and colour, including the ceiling, stimulates the senses while being in that space creating a richer spatial experience.
The colour choices didn’t entirely come from us – our initial colour choices would have cost four to ten times more. But, irresistible offers of building materials from outlets stores caused the spa to be cladded in black Chinese marble from the 1980s, the shower in blue mosaic, and the living room in coral cement-tiles. Mint green for the bedroom was the only colour we picked on our own.
You’ve explained that the design is specifically customised to your heights – in terms of what’s needed to shower, take a bath, sleep, and even sit up in bed. What do you think are the benefits of designing a space in this way? How do you think about the longevity of designs that are so customised to a specific person or persons?
BR: The Cabanon is a radical and personal experiment into optimisation through the adaptation of the spaces to our specific measurements. When you are designing for someone else (like in collective housing) it is not possible to tailor to such an extent the different spaces. I wouldn't necessarily advise going into the extremes of The Cabanon (unless there is a big limitation of space) because it could become impractical in the future, but we had little choice as we wanted to fit many functions.
I do truly believe that housing should adapt much more to the inhabitants’ lifestyles and development as this has a direct impact on their spatial needs. The design of apartments should be completely stimulated by the rich diversity of households and their lifestyles, yet we’re seeing more and more standardised plans of apartments that present an alarming lack of quality. They do not take into consideration the needs of the different types of households of today’s society: single-parents, patchwork-families, unemployed young people, senior citizens, intergenerational cohabitations. We have actually spent many years researching these situations and developed a series of principles to design adaptable and resilient apartments with true longevity, which is materialised in one of our recent projects of 288 apartments in Ivry, in the south of Paris.
Coming back to The Cabanon, while I don’t think this extreme customisation of spaces should be generalised in housing design, we can extrapolate some of its strategies in order to make current housing production better and more affordable. One could be the optimisation of space to maximise its possibilities. The Cabanon could help optimise housing and costs but in no way does it advocate toward the reduction of surfaces as the only strategy towards affordable housing, nor does it pretend to become the “house of the future.”
Is this your first small-space design project? If yes, did you find designing a small space different from an average-sized one?
BR: While The Cabanon is our first design for a small apartment, my approach was not different from designing a standard-size apartment. While designing collective housing we make several plan revisions in order to make sure that we did optimise everything as much as possible. To be clear, I am talking about maximisation of possibilities and not reduction of spaces. The Cabanon was designed in parallel to our large residential project in Ivry, in the south of Paris, and a lot of gained knowledge was extrapolated from one to the other.
Why is upgrading or repurposing an existing tiny space for living important for the future urban living?
BU: Because not to deal with the enormous potential of the already existing and underused urban material, such as the space for The Cabanon, would be socially and ecologically irresponsible and economically and culturally unacceptable. For the future of urban living building new projects will certainly remain important, especially to provide affordable housing, but to improve our cities and our living further, we need to focus on renovation, redevelopment, and adaptive reuse of old structures too.
What is your philosophy when it comes to designing a small space?
BR: Optimisation understood as maximisation, not as reduction.
