‘A Box of Surprises’: a Rotterdam Apartment That’s Only 74 Square Feet

Even Le Corbusier appreciated cabin porn. In 1952, the modernist architect built a tiny log house on the French Riviera that he could visit every summer: 144 square feet with a Mediterranean view. Outfitted with austere custom furnishings but no kitchen (it was next to a restaurant), the Cabanon, as he called it, still stands, a work of gorgeous restraint.

The Cabanon in Rotterdam is designed from residual space on the top floor of a mixed-use building. The owners take the elevator to the seventh floor and walk up one flight.Credit…Ossip van Duivenbode for The New York Times

“I don’t know if you have been there. He had a bed that you cannot sleep on. I mean, it’s, like, hard as hell,” said Beatriz Ramo López de Angulo, 45, a Spanish-born architect who lives in the Netherlands.

Ms. Ramo was not criticizing Corbusier but explaining why she and her German-born partner, Bernd Upmeyer,51, who is also an architect, chose a different approach for their own Cabanon — a tiny apartment in downtown Rotterdam that they designed and named in tribute to the master’s.

This Cabanon, which is on the top floor ofa 1950s mixed-use building, is 74 square feet, half the size of the inspiration. The couple live several floors below, in a one-bedroom unit of about 635 square feet, and use the shred of extra space above as a personal retreat and for houseguests. Renovating it over a decade in their rare moments of free time, they also made it a laboratory for their ideas about comfort.