Tiny houses, 20 furniture pieces for minimal living from 1929 to today

Realised in 1952, Le Cabanon is a small hut with a pine wood structure, the interior of which contains, in about 15 square metres, two beds, a table, some cupboards, a washbasin and a toilet. Here, the Swiss master adapted a simple wooden box into a piece of furniture, which was later used again in 1959 for the Maison du Brésil. An apparently banal parallepiped which, depending on the side on which it is placed, can be a container, a stool, a module-bookcase or a small table.

Inspired by the shelves of street florists, the Rampa cabinet is a multifunctional station on wheels.  On one side the steps act as a bookcase. On the opposite side, there are two visible compartments for storing objects and a larger door which, when opened, acts as a desk and reveals two more compartments and six drawers. Thanks to the four wheels, two of which have brakes, the object can be easily moved or secured.

In the creation of his private home, Joe Colombo designed a prototype house, where the two main areas of living, sleeping and eating, are translated into two large machines, two pieces of equipment that can be placed in a single room. The Cabriolet Bed, with a hood that raises and lowers electrically, has a dashboard headboard with lights, cigar lighter, telephone, fan and speakers. At the back of the object, there is everything you need to get ready for sleep.

In 1970 Gio Ponti designed a series of furniture pieces for Walter Ponti that were suitable, light, space-saving and easy to move, the result of a “new way of thinking about the home”. The two-seater desk with incomparable chairs, the sliding and folding dining table and the series of furnishings are illustrated in the central room of the House with Sliding Walls, a room designed to integrate spaces.

The subject of a recent re-edition, Plico is a trolley originally designed for Alessi by Richard Sapper. Made of plastic and steel, it is a folding trolley that can comfortably adapt, with its two shelves, both as a coffee table and as a work surface. Its versatile functionality and sleek black silhouette make it adaptable to any space.

Part of the permanent collection of MoMA and the Milan Triennale, Boby is a storage trolley where functionality and detail, together with its pop flavour, have made it a cult object in the history of design. The “tower on wheels” is designed with drawers and compartments in injection-moulded ABS, which guarantee easy vertical modularity, making it customisable and adaptable to both domestic and work environments.

“Figuratively speaking, it is the intimate individual recess, it is the internal place where everything that forms one’s own world is located” is how we presented Bruno Munari’s revolutionary project, winner of the XI Compasso d'Oro. Weighing 51 kilos, Abitacolo is a multifunctional bed, or rather an accessory composition that can be assembled and disassembled to create a variety of combinations for just as many uses. The basic structure carries two main horizontal shelves, a height-adjustable and tilting table, and four book shelves.

In 1972, the MoMa curated the iconic exhibition “The New Domestic Landscape”, showing the world the futuristic radical design of the Italian school. Here, Sottsass presented a prototype of an inharmonious mobile wardrobe. Each module contained within it a function of “classic” domesticity: a wardrobe, a table, a refrigerator, a library. His idea was the possibility of eliminating rigid structures in a living space, to create a new mode of living that could be transported and customised.

With the Integrated Wall System, Anonima Castelli offers the home the appearance of an undifferentiated field, which is characterised by the functions performed throughout the day. The interior walls are replaced by flexible partitions or modular containers with integrated furniture. The system, designed in collaboration with Superstudio, responds to the new conditions of flexibility of homes, offices or educational spaces and to the frequent changes of destination of any architectural container.

Manufactured in Switzerland, this prototype revolving bath took up the minimum space of 2 square metres. It was a prefabricated modular unit system, for which two holes in the ceiling for connections and a few hours of assembly were all that was needed. Inside the revolving module were four sanitary elements, which could be altered either manually or electrically.

Moving on to the 1990s, Eroica was born from the idea of bringing together all the technical and technological components normally used in the kitchen work area in a multifunctional object in its own right. The structure is geometrically represented by a spherical block, containing the work equipment, and a cone-shaped block, containing the hood and lighting.

Brightly coloured tables and chairs are hidden in plain sight between the shelves of this bookcase by designer Orla Reynolds. The white bookcase is made up of independent units of two or four squares, each of which houses a chair or table on its sides. They are easily removed from the bookcase when needed and the two purple tables can be put together to form a larger dining table.

Till Könneker’s structure combines many pieces of furniture into a freestanding cube, creating two new “rooms” in the process. The Living Cube includes a platform that houses a queen-size bed and an interior space for storage or a workspace underneath. The walls can accommodate a TV, shelving, a flip-up desk, storage for clothes and shoes, and even a minibar in a series of compartments.

Inspired by the family atmosphere of traditional kitchens, De Lucchi designed for Veneta Cucine a deconstructed kitchen hidden in a cupboard, in which the individual defines its boundaries and how it is used. It is not modular, but is made of furniture that can be moved. The technical cabinets for cooking and washing are joined by a cupboard that serves as a larder, completing this modular system, a union of three elements, each of which has a specific use: storage, cooking, washing.

Giuseppe Arezzi’s multifunctional object is designed to furnish the minimal living space of the chambres de bonne, servants’ rooms in Parisian attics of just 10 square metres. It is a prototype of a hybrid piece of furniture, with three shelves placed at three different heights so that it can be used as a desk, a coat rack, a bench or a small table.

In a 19 square metre studio, Mostaghim and Associates have condensed a compact kitchen, a bathroom and a multi-purpose bed unit. The latter is raised on a structure capable of containing a “wardrobe” unit and other furniture - including the sofa - which can be taken out when needed, and put away when required.

The prototype consists of uniform-height wooden boxes that are placed side-by-side on the floor to create a 30-centimetre-tall platform. The containers vary in width and depth to accommodate a range of contents, including a double mattress, clothing and toiletries. The lid of each unit conceals its contents and doubles as a floor panel.

The wooden skeleton is designed as a frame to hold a variety of traditional cotton items, and can be customised through a modular system of wooden dividers, cushions, futons and zabuton – the padded layer under the futon. Starting from a wooden plinth, the four elements can be added in various combinations, producing a flexible system that can be modified during use.

The Boston-based smart living brand, which specialises in the design of domestic robotics, has recently presented Cloud Bed. A bed that can be raised and lowered with a simple mechanism, revealing a second piece of furniture once it is up: a desk or sofa.

The NEST wooden crate by Malessa Studio actually conceals a bed, a desk, a bench and a shelf inside. A project designed in response to the increasingly nomadic lifestyle of young urbanites. When fully closed, NEST looks like a pine packing crate (113 x 85 x 28 cm). It has optional wheels that can be attached to the bottom corners to help with the moving process.