Family Affair
For architect Jonathan Stanway of Dousters, this project is a family affair: "This house was originally built by my great grandfather, and it’s been in my family for four generations," he told Never Too Small. Today, the single family home in West Sussex, England, is subdivided into four stand-alone units, with Tardis, a 34sqm/365sqft apartment, set in what was once just a living room.
The home is compact, but this didn’t stop Stanway from ensuring it had both a feel of luxury as well as full functionality – including a separate office area (that even turns into a guest bedroom). “When working with particularly small footprints, there’s always going to be spatial trade offs. Having said this, it’s really important that we understand the balance between functionality and luxury”. One of the ways he achieved this was by minimising the “dead space” – or avoiding the creation of corridors. The design tapped into its living room roots (read: open concept) and added minimal partitions to form the bathroom, sleeping area, and office. The living room and kitchen coexist in the centre.
Luxurious Functionality
The living area, bathed in natural light from the bay windows leading to the garden, is the heart of the apartment. With warm timber floors underfoot, Stanway gave the room an open plan “to allow for an area to relax while still maintaining sizable circulation space around the furniture”. This room also contains a small but mighty kitchen, where large-format porcelain tiles were specially selected as the splashback due to their natural veins, giving the feeling of one continuous piece of stone and instilling a feeling of quality. A strategically positioned breakfast bar by the window offers a place to eat or work and enjoy the view, while a wall of discrete white cabinets use the space from under the bed in the neighbouring room to create additional storage for things like spices.
Together – but removed – from the living area is the office, which is buffered by a glass wall, or what Stanway refers to as a “soft separation”. Glass was selected not only for the level of visual interest it brings to the room, but also for its utility as an acoustic barrier that allows natural light into the otherwise windowless space. The room, which can be closed off by a curtain for privacy, includes a 2-metre wide desk that converts into a single guest bed when needed. This Murphy bed (if we can call it that) gets major points for keeping the desk level as the bed folds, so you don’t need to clear it off before switching to sleep mode. At the back of the room, a concealed door, fitted within the cladded wall at the back of the office, leads to the communal laundry and can be used as a secondary access to the apartment.
A Sleeping Nook Built for a King
The primary bedroom was designed to be as compact as possible while still offering the luxury of a king-sized bed, which meant going wall-to-wall. “It was my father’s interest in sailing that influenced me to study the way in which yachts utilise a small footprint,” Stanway told NTS. “Typically, in boats, the bed takes up the full width of the bedroom. We tried to copy this blueprint and use it in the way we designed our sleep box.” The raised bed allowed them to carve out some space for storage underneath, while overhanging wardrobes provide further storage and form a niche for charging phones and storing books. A simple curtain, mirroring that of the office, provides privacy but also gives the flexibility to the tenant if they don’t want to feel completely withdrawn.
Small Solutions for Affordable Living
Reflecting on his creation, Stanway underscores the transformative potential inherent within small-space living. He noted that by reimagining conventional design paradigms, it becomes possible to imagine a future where “the younger generation has the opportunity to live in a space that’s tailored toward their functional requirements in a more desirable location and for a much more affordable price”.
