Ottawa house is only 8 feet wide
At just 584 square feet, one of Ottawa’s smallest new homes it’s part of an international movement toward smaller living, writes ELIZABETH PAYNE.
If he stretches his arms, Robert Matthews can almost reach from one inside wall of his house to the other. He’s not a giant; his newly built house is just, well, petite.
Eight feet wide, to be exact. That is narrower than a typical subway car. Matthew’s eight-foot house, which measures 584 square feet, is one of the smallest in Ottawa ( just about one-quarter the size of an average house) and part of an international movement toward smaller living.
For some, the movement is about seeing how low they can go — in floor space, that is.
A group of Michigan University students, for example, made a documentary about living in just 25 square feet of their own homes. They called it Thrive With Less. A Swedish architect designed a macro cabin — just four square metres (about 43 square feet). Some have designed mini houses on wheels. And there are many more experiments in living small around the world. In North America, the trend is seen as both a reaction to the housing market crash in the U.S. and the McMansion trend of previous decades.
It’s not exactly taking over. Canadians still have among the biggest houses in the world — the average house size in Ottawa is 2,000 square feet, compared with 800 square feet in 1945 — but smaller living spaces are becoming more common.
Still Matthews’ house — which he calls the GennY House, for Generation Y — is getting plenty of attention. He sees it as a kind of laboratory. “It’s an experiment to see how small is comfortable.”
The modern, Japanese-inspired infill located close to the Ottawa River in Ottawa’s old west end is eight feet wide at its front and flares to a more spacious 12-feetwide at the rear, where the living room is located.
Those are exterior measurements, however. Inside, there is about one foot less of space across.
The eight-foot house was born of circumstances as much as philosophy. Matthews and his wife purchased a 1920s cottage on a corner lot in a neighbourhood close to the Ottawa River. The cottage had been moved there when the National Capital Commission built the western parkway along the river. Matthews originally planned to knock down the white clapboard cottage and build two units on the lot — and make some money, he says. His wife had other ideas. She wanted the vintage cottage to stay. A new house would be attached to the older cottage. When Matthews looked at the space he had left to build, he took it as a challenge. “I thought: ‘I can do that.’ ” The only question was whether the results would make for a pleasant living space. For months, he says, he would count floor tiles in restaurants to get a sense what size his finished house would be. “My house is going to be as big as this washroom,” he would think.
Matthews has not yet moved in (and he and his wife plan to keep their primary residence in rural eastern Ontario), but he has designed the one-bedroom home to feel spacious. Part of the trick, he said, is the length of the house — 32 feet — and plenty of windows. The house also includes a large veranda and second-storey balcony that stretch the length of the house and add significant living space when the weather permits (a total of 364 square feet). And the outdoor spaces include sliding screens made from western cedar that can essentially turn outdoor space into a room.
Among the biggest challenges of living in a small space is stuff. In a world in which storage rental units proliferate, living with less might be appealing, but it is often hard to pull off. Matthews thinks smaller living spaces will appeal to Millennials, or Generation Y, many of whom are more mobile and less settled than earlier generations were at their ages.
Matthew’s experience has also convinced him that there are plenty of places in central Ottawa, where similar small builds could take advantage of underused space.
“If I can do this, there must be a ton of properties around that have potential, but nobody knows it.”