It is functional and a thing of beauty...


Inhabitat:

Houses with almost impossibly narrow profiles have become a familiar theme in land-scarce Japan and Katsutoshi Sasaki + Associates' incredibly skinny micro house is one of the latest additions to this architectural trend. Tucked between two traditional houses in Aichi, Imai is a minimalist dwelling that uses natural light and the full length of its 69 foot site to create a beautiful and spacious family home.
Minimalism is the soul of the post-growth world of which we are already a part. The home of this mode is today and tomorrow. Yesterday (1945 to 2008) was about unlimited economic and demographic expansion. The beginning of the end of this moment was the early 70s, with the rise of the environmental movement and the decline in profits. We did not realize until then that rapid economic growth is only temporary. The norm, as the young French economist Thomas Piketty points out in his new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century is actually growth around 1 percent. The neoliberal moment escaped this hard law (which was also recognized by the writers of the Monthly Review as stagnation) by relocating wealth from the reality of economics to the pure fiction of finance. The imagination is after all unlimited.

Mininalism could only be an art movement in a world where growth knows no end. But in our time of climate trouble and rapid urbanization it is more and more functional, and more and more transforming not just our standards of beauty but our ethical values.