Ever decreasing quarters

Last year I was lucky enough to spend my summer holidays on a quiet Greek island on the Ionian Sea. With its charming bays, excellent beach and warm sea, it was the perfect place for lazy afternoons lounging in the shade of the olive trees. But despite its undoubted beauty, it is deserted for most of the year. Only two or three generations ago a primary school for ninety pupils stood in this enchanted corner of the world. Now it is closed down. As it turns out, not a single child lives on the island. But young people can be seen during the holiday season. “There were several hundred of us in the past. We were satisfied with the fact that we had enough to eat and had a roof above our heads. However, everybody has more requirements these days. They want better schools, theatres, city entertainment and the sort of services you need to make money to pay for – and there is very little work here,” explained an older resident, one of the few people who have stayed on the island, about the reasons for the emigration. And how many such places are there in the world? Quite a few. According to the World Health Organization, the urban population is increasing on average by app. 1.8 pct per year globally. More than half of humanity now lives in cities, whereas fifty years ago only a third of mankind lived in urban areas.

How will these changes impact the way we live? According to Marcus Engman, the chief designer of IKEA, in five years (i.e. in 2020) some significant changes will become increasingly evident. First of all, by living in more populated urban areas, we will statistically occupy smaller and smaller dwellings and this is a trend that furniture designers will have to address. IKEA itself launched a special line last year designed for small apartments. Marcus Engman explains that it is not unthinkable that stools will become one of the most important pieces of furniture because they can serve an array of functions: they can be used for sitting on, they can be bedside or coffee tables, or podiums – and it is simple to store them by stacking them on top of each other.

The days when the bulky sofa in front of the TV was the queen of the living room will become a thing of the past. Besides, IKEA is not reinventing the wheel in this respect because multi-functional hybrid furniture has been enjoying growing interest over the last few years. A sofa that in one hand movement can be transformed into a bed, and not just any old bed but a bunk bed, has so far just been an oddity shared on Facebook, but it could soon become a feature of all our living rooms – as well as beds that can be concealed in walls with additional integrated desk and bookshelf functions. We could soon have moveable walls that make it possible to transform a living room into two separate bedrooms in the blink of an eye. Or apartments that unfold and fold up like Swiss army knives, according to what we need to use them for at a given time.

Architect Gary Chang even has a bath with a jacuzzi in his exclusive small apartment in Hong Kong. But when he wants to go to sleep he covers it with a bed, which can be pulled out of the wall on series of springs. It should come as no surprise that this was invented in Hong Kong, which is very much the Mecca for micro-apartments at the moment. Last year one leading developer in the city put on sale high standard apartments with areas ranging from 15 sqm to 18 sqm. And they sold like hot cakes. Some were even bought without being viewed first. This is hardly surprising, since property prices in Hong Kong have increased by 300 pct over the last twelve years. If you don’t buy now, you’ll have to pay much more next year. But the economic aspect is very important – and not just in Hong Kong. But will this trend towards financially feasible approaches in increasingly densely inhabited metropolises one day appear in Poland? I hope it will not. However, if it does happen, I recommend moving to a small island on the Ionian Sea, where admittedly there is nothing to do, but hybrid furniture will probably never be of any use to anybody living there either.