Architects beginning to think big

A survey by the American Institute of Architects reveals that 57 per cent of architecture firms reported a decrease in the square footage of their residential projects in 2010, up from 13 per cent back in 2005. The architectural bookshelves pullulate with books about the wonders of diminutive houses, and there's a raft of architect-designed small houses bearing cool names: the itHouse, the Roho, the weeHouse and the Tumbleweed Tiny House – whose designer and builder, Jay Shafer, gained a publicity coup by tethering it to his car.

These small houses – they are American small, that is, less than 750 sq ft – pitch into the post-recessionary, eco-coolness of "small".

In a slightly different fashion, architects in Britain have been working hard to find solutions for the space deficit. Richard Horden, of Horden Cherry Lee Architects, in London, developed the micro-compact home, known as m-ch, in 2005.

A 2.65m aluminium cube, it is a lightweight transportable living space. "Since 2005 we've built 15," says Horden. "There's a village of seven near Munich, part of an O2 campus, and none as yet in Britain."

Horden and his colleagues have now bought the unit cost down to €18,000-€26,000, and he emphasises that his bothy is ahead of the times: "It couldn't have happened until recently, because it fits with flat-screen televisions, laptops and other technologies." We shouldn't think of such innovations as small spaces, he counsels, more as smart spaces. The public, he says, should think of a m-ch home more as they would a first-class airline seat or a Smart car – an ergonomic response to a wider problem, and one that will help decondition us from the desire for size.

Architects have become adept at building in tight sites. Take architect Graham Bizley's north-east London home (pictured), designed to fit into an awkward infill space. With a change in planning policy in 1999, notes Bizley, of Prewett Bizley Architects, "people became able to build on small sites: garages, ends of gardens, infill sites". Bizley bought his rhomboidal plot for £30,000 in 1999, when such places were still relatively plentiful in London. They are now far harder to find, and considerably more expensive.

The idea that architecture will become smaller, industrialised and modular has long antecedents. "It's a conversation that has roots in the 1930s, and architects have long said that they want to make housing more like the car industry," says Bizley. "The trouble is that people like to express individuality." Like Horden, he urges the house-hunting public to look at quality rather than quantity: "If you've got a good architect, a small space isn't such an issue."

Space standards or not, it seems that we all have to address the possibility of living smaller and smarter.

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