As the annual event of the design world, Milan Design Week, which gathers creative ideas, never disappoints. Forced to miss 2020 due to the epidemic, it came back again with excellent works on September 5-10 this year.
However, outside the Milan Design Week pavilion, there is also a lot of attention, and brands on the streets of Milan also take the opportunity to serve carefully prepared "design dishes".
Luxury brand Gucci opens a stationery store, Gucci Cartoleria, which is open until September 17, with the theme of "The Magic of Everyday Life" – customers push the door into the store, as if falling into the scene of the game "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening", and become a magician to begin a fantasy adventure.
▲ Gucci Cartoleria stationery shop in Milan. Image courtesy of: Twitter @gucci
In this "magic stationery store" that can sell even a set of playing cards for 2500 yuan, there is a corner that is particularly eye-catching - the wooden border under the fitting mirror has been dug into a small arch, which is jokingly called "Mouse House" by Twitter netizens.
▲ Gucci Cartoleria stationery shop in Milan. Image courtesy of Instagram @gucci
Even if zoomed in to its true proportions, this "rat house" is still a small house.
However, looking at this "rat house", not only is the furniture complete, but the decorations are also very tonal - the retro sofa is in front of the playing card carpet, the wooden dining table is next to the green dice shaped pier, and the picture frame on the wall and the metal frame set by the mirror are also exquisite.
Such a small house will also be very cozy to live in.
Gucci Cartoleria stationery shop in Milan. Image courtesy of Nss Magazine
Coincidentally, miniature model artist Bridget McCarty also recently caught fire on Instagram, and she once made exquisite models for Disney visited her small house in the form of videos.
The most popular "Little Monkey House" visit video has nearly 500,000 likes in less than a month, and has been retweeted by well-known media such as Designboom.
Lehrer Architects designed a small house for the homeless in Los Angeles. Image credit: Dezeen
Moving into a small house is also starting to become a key trend in 2020.
Nick Mosley, who runs a micro-residential company in California, thought that his career would end under the epidemic, but he received a large number of consultation calls and emails, and his performance broke through the record and reached a new high.
Once the living space becomes smaller, the innovation of the concept of home storage naturally becomes the next opportunity.
One Japanese brand saw this future trend and went to a University in Switzerland to collaborate with the Department of Industry on a project – exquisite furniture and household items designed for living in small spaces.
This is MUJI's "Compact Life" series, in collaboration with ECAL (University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland), under the direction of Project Director Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard and Swiss designer Michel Charlot, debuted during Milan Design Week and was displayed in MUJI's Milan store.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > promotional animation is the "entrance" to understanding the storage of small houses</h1>
In this collaborative project, MUJI launched a creative concept - the concept of small house storage, rather than the new addition of 12 products.
However, how can these 12 products be integrated into a design concept that goes beyond the product itself and convey it simply and clearly to the public?
MUJI brought in Swiss illustrator Mathias Forbach and animator Adrien Kaeser to answer the questions with a 1 minute, 20-second animation. It is this animation that makes 12 products add up to more than 12 products.
▲"ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Living" event poster. Image courtesy of Frame
The final effect of the animation is very "MUJI" - although it is minimalist to the extreme, the effort behind this must be unimaginable.
If you were handed a project and told a story in a simple line of instructions without dialogue, and the story would be connected by 12 products, and finally a complete concept would be given, wouldn't the difficulty factor be quite high?
And Mathias Forbac's challenges don't stop there.
If you've seen Mathias Forbac's illustrations, you'll be impressed by its iconic "faceless" figures and highly decorative images.
▲ Mathias Forbac and shoes printed with his representative works. Image courtesy of Instagram @_fichtre
But this time, he put down all his own logos, used the "pen" handed over by MUJI, and in a pure line technique, one picture after another corresponded to the "frames" in the animation, forming this "MUJI" without author watermarks.
▲"ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Living" exhibition brochure. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
The story reduces the little house to a square box.
As the top cover lifts and the two walls push open, the day of the round-faced protagonist begins — the alarm clock rings at half past six, and he reaches into the bedside table and takes out his mobile phone to press the alarm clock and begins a series of preparations for going out in the morning. After he went out, the top of the box was closed, and the film came to an abrupt end.
▲The beginning of the animation with the theme of "ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Life". Image courtesy of ECAL.com
▲The end of the animation with the theme of "ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Life". Image courtesy of ECAL.com
From the bed to the bathroom and to the relaxation area, 12 products came on the scene one after another, from black lines to red lines, and "greeted" the protagonists in this interesting way.
▲"ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Life" theme animation. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
The "Hello" screen will also float up a dialog box with the product name in Japanese and English. The design of the dialog box is also very simple, referring to the "3 red lines" design on MUJI's price tag.
Make the items that are really needed in life into the form that is really needed.
——MUJI's concept of "comfortable living"
In addition to the picture showing the product, the protagonist of the round face turns his head left and right in the mirror, and the happy smiley face is also drawn with a red line, and this happy atmosphere permeates the entire animation.
Not all products are inside the square box.
There is a very clever and natural plot in the story - the protagonist of the round face looks out the window and sees the insect house designed by this cooperation. The concept of storage of a small house is not only in the room, but also in the window that can be looked out.
▲"ECAL x MUJI: Comfortable Life" theme animation. Image courtesy of: Fichtre Artist's website
The animation part, assisted by Adrien Kaeser, uses vibration to make the picture deliberately appear unsmooth, and the animation originally drawn with the classic line drawing method has become very innovative, and it is a work that can only be seen in this era.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="47" > these are the things that people who live in small houses will really use</h1>
This project does not care whether the product has a novel idea that breaks through the past, but puts the target group of people in the first place. The target group here is the general public who live in small spaces.
The group of undergraduate students involved in the design were themselves targeted — they lived in limited space in school dormitories or off-campus apartments, so at the beginning of the project, they started by documenting their lifestyles.
▲ ECAL Industrial Design Student involved in design. Image courtesy of Instagram @lucie.demartin
They then interviewed target groups of people around the world who lived in small spaces to observe their living conditions and ways of living in small houses.
According to an interview with Project Director Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard, whose lifestyle record is mainly aimed at Europeans, he sees the project as an opportunity for MUJI to introduce Swiss or European lifestyles.
After carefully documenting and analyzing the lifestyle habits of the target group, the students returned to the design drawings to conceive of products that would be truly useful to the group, without departing from MUJI's unique brand style.
▲ MUJI Milan Shop. Image courtesy of AXIS
The bedside table, designed by Noémie Soriano, was first featured in the animated short.
This bedside table made of solid oak has a built-in adjustable high and low shelf, and the front baffle is also very intimately installed with a cable fixer to facilitate charging the phone at night.
The shelves placed in the bathroom are also special.
What's really special about it is its shape and size — it's particularly slender, just the width to side-by-side with the next phone and a men's watch, and when it meets a narrow space, it can also tuck its small body into it.
▲ Noémie Soriano designed bedside tables. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
Manon Novelli gives it two uses, with outward-facing flat panels that can be used as both whiteboards and mirrors. There are three layers of storage space on the back of the tablet, and there are multiple hooks underneath to hang towels and other items.
▲ Bathroom shelf designed by Manon Novelli. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
The best thing about this design is that these functional areas, which originally occupied a large area, are now hidden behind a mirror, and even if they are placed in a small space, they are not easy to appear cluttered.
Victorine Lefebvre's storage basket can also be used as a ladder, and Eugénie Perrin's wall-mounted picture frame can be inserted with cards and sticky notes at the edges, all of which show how this group of design students feel about life.
It's fun to work with students because they always have new ideas.
—Elie Fazel, Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at ECAL
▲ Ladder storage basket designed by Victorine Lefebvre. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
▲ Wall-mounted photo frame designed by Eugénie Perrin. Image courtesy of ECAL.com
When people live in small houses, there will be many subtle changes in life behavior and habits.
But they may not realize that something is wrong, and they can only vaguely feel that something is wrong, and at this time, they need to observe the designers in detail and use the just right design to solve those "wrong".
EcAL industrial design students may not be the best solution, but at least they throw out the problem, I believe that there will be more excellent designs to stand up and solve the various pain points of the small house residents.
▲ Paper wall hanging and its designer Lucie De Martin. Image courtesy of Instagram @lucie.demartin
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="77" > families obsessed with the small house lifestyle, as many as the world</h1>
Living Big in a Tiny House is one of New Zealand's most popular YouTube channels, and the video is based on the living conditions of people living in small houses around the world.
Bryce Langston, who created the channel, was originally a professional actor. However, many years ago, he was fired from a TV show and lived a "dragon running" life with no fixed income.
Bryce Langston in his own little house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Unable to withstand the financial pressures of mortgages and rents, he moved into a small house and fell in love with this life. At the same time, he also found that he was not a minority of outliers, and there was a group of people who were obsessed with this small house lifestyle.
So at the end of 2013, he created the YouTube channel and began visiting small houses around the world.
Today, With over 4 million followers and over 550 million views, Life in the Little House is popular not only in New Zealand, but also in North America and Europe.
The design of the last step is also very thoughtful, a little lower than the other steps, just the height required to kneel into the attic, in case the overly tall Bryce hits the roof.
Rasa Pescud is another character on the duo team on Rich Life in a Little House, where she is responsible for the production and editing of the video. She is also a close companion to Bryce, and the small house she co-built with Bryce was completed in 2019 and became the highlight of all the small house videos.
▲ Rasa works in her own small house. Image courtesy of YouTube @Living Big In A Tiny House
This small house is only 15 m², 6 meters above the ground, with movable wheels at the bottom, and is temporarily parked in his family's yard.
▲ The state of Bryce and Rasa's small house just completed. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
After all, it is the "house viewing professionals" who have visited countless small houses, and the small house they built has a lot of articles, which is simply a quintessential version of "Rich Life in a Small House".
The staircase, cabinets and other furniture in this small house are all from Varient Spaces and are custom-made by Jake and Kasia, who are particularly good at designing furniture for small houses.
▲ Furniture customization process. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
The staircase they designed for this small house is simply the soul of the whole space.
First, the staircase connects the bedroom space on the ground floor to the attic in a way that has a minimum area and no enclosed space. In simple terms, the staircase not only does not visually cut the space area, but makes the space look larger.
▲ Stairs inside the small house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Secondly, the staircase is also a large locker, and all the drawers are extended in the most appropriate way to open the storage items. In one of the cabinets, switches for all energy systems are also available, including fuse boxes, solar controllers, 12-volt power transformers, and more.
▲ Storage space under the stairs. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Finally, don't forget to add artistic elements to enhance the aesthetics of the interior space.
On the staircase frame and the wooden bench panel, green materials with rainbow afterglow are inlaid in a delicate manner to form a symmetrical geometric pattern that alludes to a sense of power.
▲ Mosaic pattern on stair frame and wooden stool panel. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Bryce describes the motif and the little house with the "seed of life." Because this small house and the "Rich Life in the Little House" channel are indeed "seeds of life" for him, bringing him a new life.
Bryce and Rasa drinking from the grill in a small house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
But even with the hiring of professional craftsmen to create so much high-end furniture and the use of a more expensive energy system, the entire small house cost only $65,000 (420,000 yuan), which is 10% of the average local house price.
▲ Photos of the interior of Bryce and Rasa's small house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
This has also saved the couple a lot of savings, and recently bought a piece of land in the thick bushes of mountains, where the small house will move in the future.
Since the attic of the small house has two skylights in different directions, Bryce and Rasa can enjoy the starry sky view of the mountain forest before going to bed.
▲ The attic of the small house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Rich Life in a Little House is no longer just a YouTube channel that posts videos.
Enter its official website, there will be professional articles and published books, there will also be household goods recommendations suitable for small house life, divided into 8 categories of 60 items, click on the link to jump to the Amazon shopping page.
Among them, the wall-mounted magnetic knife holder just needed by the provincial government has appeared in the two visit videos of Bryce and Rasa's small house, which can be said to be their "self-retained recommendation".
▲ Bryce cooking in a small house. Image courtesy of Living Big In A Tiny House
Even with this comprehensive shopping list, designing the most suitable household items for the small house occupants is still an important direction for designers to work on in the future.
Inside a small house, if the furniture occupies the necessary walking space, such discomfort will bring many potential negative effects on people's living conditions. Even if this is the norm, it is also a normal state that must be broken through through the power of design, with care and effort. The design that allows the public to live a more comfortable life may not look conspicuous, but it is extremely meaningful and valuable, and it is fully worthy of our affirmation and applause.