“I kept thinking about what I did not own, what was missing,” 36-year-old Fumio Sasaki, a Tokyo editor, told Reuters earlier this year. Having sold or donated so much stuff he was left with little more than three shirts, four pairs of trousers and socks, and a handful of other essential items. “Spending less time on cleaning or shopping means I have more time to spend with friends, go out, or travel on my days off. I have become a lot more active.”
Minimalism is on the rise, especially in Japan where the notion sits comfortably with Zen Buddhist philosophies. But while minimalism has traditionally referred to what’s going on—or not—inside a dwelling, there’s a trend to build actual lodgings to a similarly simple, no-frills spec. And leading the charge is Muji, a Japanese firm already fittingly famed for their less-is-more approach to interior designs and furnishings.
In 2014, the company released their ‘vertical house’, a prefabricated three-story micro-apartment without interior walls, doors or full ceilings, connected via a pair of staircases. Measuring just 4.4m-wide, the airy design easily slots into Tokyo’s crowded city streets. The first floor is set for storage, the middle for dining and relaxing, while the top is where residents sleep. The open-plan layout is also highly efficient, with insulation and, unusually, just one air-conditioning unit, positioned up top (hot air rises).
Now simplifying their structures even further still, Muji have moved from micro-apartments to micro-cabins with the unveiling of their flat-pack huts. Each is a brainchild of three lauded designers: Brit, Jasper Morrison; Konstantin Gric from Germany; and from Japan, Muji’s head of design, Naota Fukasawa.
“My Muji hut represents an enclosed space which is small enough to stay within the norm of constructions which need no building permission in Japan,” says Grcic of his design. “Being a rigid and self-supportive structure it can be placed in any terrain and environment.”
All three huts are built using only sustainable materials—mainly cork (Morrison), aluminium (Grcic), and wood (Fukasawa), harbouring basic but welcoming open-plan environments, easily flooded with natural light, to be positioned upon city or rural plots. “Whenever I think about going to the country for the weekend, I start imagining a small house with everything needed for a short stay,” says Morrison. “Then I start thinking about finding the right piece of land. The dream usually collapses when I think of the complexity of building a new house, but with this project I realized there was the chance to design such a house as a product rather than a one-off.”
The huts riff on the notion of kyosho jutaku homes in Tokyo, residences so small they can fit into a single parking space. In keeping with this philosophy, Muji’s clever new tagline is “Muji is enough”.
“There is a certain charm when you hear the word ‘hut’,” says Fukasawa. “Not quite a holiday house, yet not as simple as going camping. If there is a small hut, there is a feeling that one could feel slip into nature anytime. I thought that living small in the smallest of structures is a Muji kind of living.”
The huts go on sale in Japan next year, priced $35,000 to $55,000.
Words: Jamie Christian Desplaces
