00:14The Cairo flats were designed in 1936 by a Melbourne architect called Best Overend.
00:20He'd been working in the UK with an English architect called Wells Coates and they were
00:25developing quite experimental ideas for how to provide the maximum amenity in the
00:30minimum footprint and they called this idea the minimum flat.
00:35The Cairo flats are listed on the Heritage Register as being historically significant.
00:41One of the first examples of serially arranged flats, so side by side and stacked on top of
00:46one another, also for their so-called heroic use of cantilevered concrete in the balconies
00:52and the spiral staircase.
00:56I live here on my own.
00:59As soon as you walk in the door, you're greeted with an expanse of view onto the garden.
01:06The apartment does a number of things quite well.
01:09Firstly, they're north facing, so they're getting a lot of great natural light.
01:14But even though they're quite small, they do a couple of things that make them feel much
01:18bigger.
01:19Firstly, the really high 2.9 metre ceiling.
01:22When you look into the detail of the place, there's that cove junction between the walls
01:26and the ceiling.
01:28The sense of space is extended by not registering that hard line.
01:32So when I moved in, there was very little storage.
01:35I wanted to really respect the bones of this building because it was really well designed.
01:39I made a few minor modifications to the space.
01:43Bookshelves, wardrobe, bed, extra objects stuck in the room, they're all integrated into
01:47the wall.
01:49So the curtain's definitely a bit of a theatrical element.
01:53I can use it to cover up all of my clothes and books and personal bits and pieces and make
01:58it a bit more of a living space rather than a bedroom.
02:06I guess when you're designing a small space, you want to make sure that everything needs
02:10to be performing at least one, if not two or three functions.
02:14The foot rest that makes sitting in the corner and reading comfortably become something that
02:19I can stand on to reach higher storage elements.
02:22Everything starts doubling up.
02:26This window used to be the kitchen door, which meant that you couldn't actually put anything
02:31up against that wall.
02:35Closing that in and turning it into a servery window meant that I can now fold the bed down
02:39into that position.
02:41And it's also a great spot to have my bedside table, books, glass of water.
02:49At night time, I pull the curtain back, the bed folds down and it comes all the way around
02:55to the front window and closes the room in, makes it a nice cosy space to sleep.
03:02The kitchen was renovated in around about 2000 by someone who lived here before me and hasn't
03:09been modified since.
03:11Because the bathroom's so large, it kind of makes for the perfect space to have your
03:15laundry as well.
03:16So there's a washing machine in there.
03:18The original apartment always had a bathtub, still has a bathtub and I was definitely keen
03:24on keeping that bathtub.
03:25It's a little bit of luxury in such a small space.
03:29The challenge of living in a space this small is designing it in ways so that you can enjoy
03:34all of the things that a normal house would have.
03:37Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to eat, somewhere to study.
03:44If I have friends over for dinner, I take my desk, which doubles as my dining table.
03:50I pull it out into the middle of the room, bring a couple of the outside chairs in and
03:54then I've got a dining setting.
04:02You've got windows on both sides of the apartment so you get really excellent cross ventilation.
04:10Populations are growing.
04:12Melbourne's hit 5 million last year, heading for something like 8 million by 2050.
04:18We need to be thinking about how we're going to house people more space efficiently.
04:24I think when you've got a really well built building like the Cairo Flats, the last thing
04:30you want to be doing, apart from its historical value, is knocking it down because it's providing
04:35another kind of housing which doesn't really exist elsewhere, which really suits a certain
04:41kind of resident at a certain time in their lives.
04:45environmentally irresponsible to be knocking, just knocking buildings down and building new
04:48all the time.
04:49We need to be thinking about how we can repurpose what we've already got.
Comments