Living in a Chinese capsule: mini-houses that can be installed anywhere

Historically, living in a small space means adapting, making sacrifices, compressing desires for comfort. Today, however, micro-housing has become almost an aesthetic, often told as a conscious choice, sometimes even desired. The trend of mini houses ranges from tiny city apartments, derived from renovations that compulsively fractionated space or reclaimed former commercial or industrial spaces, to those small living quarters nestled in the woods, perfect for "disconnecting" from the daily grind. This sort of fascination with "minimal living" has driven experimentation in the search for increasingly compact and autonomous living prototypes. Such as the Space Capsule Houses, the project of a Chinese company that has come up with prefabricated housing units designed to be laid in natural or semi-rural environments with minimal logistical effort.

The single-deck is a self-contained living module for one or two people, installed directly in contact with the ground, while the double-deck seems to be extracted from a Walking City design by Archigrams, with a raised structure designed so that the living area is outside: almost a contradiction that openly declares that indoor space, after all, is not enough. Both solutions are prefabricated, transportable and installable in a few days. They are compact cells, where every function is enclosed in the domed lattice space made of wood and clad in aluminum.

While staying within a New Space Age mood, it is clear that we are a long way from examples that have made architectural history such as the Nakagin Capsule Tower designed by Kisho Kurokawa in 1972 in Tokyo, demolished recently, which also borrowed the design of space capsules. At the same time, these capsules speak well to our present. The architectural language is round shapes, exposed wood in the interiors, and panoramic windows.

Compared to Nakagin's space modules, not only the design intent has changed since the 1970s, now aimed at a quite different audience, but also the narrative of the project itself: from the glossy paper of architecture magazines - Domus had published the project in 1973 - to a virtual tour via Instagram. From the manufacturers themselves, on official channels, the living experience is told as an adventure, as a return to nature, but also as an extremely simple solution to satisfy users of glamping or "alternative" tourism, especially on Instagram, where the Space Age aesthetic seems to be back in vogue.

The reels posted on the @capsulecastle_tinyhouse profile promote "super-fast installation," with timelapses that speed up assembly even more, and worldwide shipping within thirty days. A house that arrives in the mail "with just a phone call."