Warning: if you suffer from claustrophobia this is not the place for you. Polish architect Jakub Szczęsny from Centrala studio has designed the tightest apartment ever in Varsavia, between two buildings, by request of Israeli writer Etgar Keret.
Opened on October 20th 2012, the house is managed by Polish Modern Art Foundation: due to polish regulations, it is too small to be labeled as habitable. Framed within Varsavia’s ghetto, this project embodies the writer’s will of remembering his family, killed during the Holocaust. Even though long and narrow apartments have been seen before, Karen House also represents a way to fill the space between two buildings. Jakub Szczęsny was especially impressed by the difference between those two buildings: one was built before the war, the other one afterwards. Therefore linking them meant linking two different eras.  

The house presents a maximum width of 1,5 meter: it looks like a big hallway divided on two floors featuring every amenities: bathroom, kitchen, dining room and living room on the first floor; a desk and a bed on the second floor. The area of the apartment is 14,5 sm. The house has been put between the two buildings by using a 3d steel framework with wood details, insulating panels and polystyrene, all covered in white plaster. It is separate by the city sewage system and it shares the same power supplies of one of the adjacent buildings. Keret House stands at almost 3 meters from the ground. To access the apartment there’s a remote-controlled rollaway stairway that turns into the floor of the first floor, in a perfect “Star Trek way”.

Link:kerethouse.com
       www.centrala.net.pl

Photo courtesy of: Bartek Warzęcha