Architect Renato Arrigo from Messina in Italy has taken up the gauntlet thrown down to concentrate a house for a family of 4 in just 25 square meters.
“Restructuring a flat in the centre of Taormina is never easy. Building constraints, the superintendency of architectural heritage, boundary distances, neighbourhood plans, drive-over spaces, are all factors affecting free expression. Making a 25 square metre apartment comfortable for 4 people risks becoming a fruitless exercise of style. Ensuring all comforts without affecting the convenience offered by household electronic items is a very arduous task. Giving the sense of 'emptiness' and trying to approach a reductionistic line is probably impossible.”
The name of the house, starting from the doorbell, is 'Space is Luxury', due to its anomalous space feature: just 25 square meters providing a comfortable space for its four occupants without having to resize any convenience.
“A small house does not have to be big to be beautiful - says the architect Arrigo - A small house does not have to forego functions to be big. 'Space is (NOT ) luxury' is the ironic sentence written below a suspended bed which can be raised to the ceiling to grant the necessary space to daytime activities. A door frame extended out onto the terrace can become the ideal extension of a long table when it is opened and then be hidden. A long folding table can become a big window frame and then de-materialise when closed”.
Architect Arrigo concludes: “A handful of square meters in the old town centre do not allow me to add any other words, except to ask myself the same old question: Is space luxury?”
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