Applying tiny-house principles in an Abu Dhabi studio

The writer's key design requirement was one that seemed incompatible with a studio: being able to invite friends over for dinner without them feeling like they were dining in my bedroom.

The writer’s space-smart Abu Dhabi studio. Ravindranath K / The National

Tiny isn’t a word often used to describe UAE real estate, but amid all the focus on the biggest, tallest and most luxurious, a contrarian few take the opposite approach.

I’m one of them. When I moved back to the UAE five years ago, it seemed like the perfect time to apply the principles of the so-called tiny-house movement, which is based around spurning the consumerist ideal of endlessly bigger and more expensive houses, opting instead for small, affordable and well-designed spaces.

The high cost of accommodation here was one incentive. And with air conditioning being essential for at least half the year, a smaller space would be directly proportional to my environmental footprint. An added benefit was that having a unique design would also avoid one of my pet hates: walking into a friend’s home and feeling like I’d crossed through a portal leading to Ikea’s showroom.

Some tiny-house zealots live in spaces as small as 8 square metres, which makes my 50-square-metre studio seem almost profligate, but it means I have a full-sized bathroom and kitchen, and room for a dining table that can seat eight. My key design requirement was one that seemed incompatible with a studio: being able to invite friends over for dinner without them feeling like they were dining in my bedroom.

A bit of research showed that thousands of other tiny-house dwellers had faced and solved this dilemma in two main ways. One was to have the bed on a mezzanine floor (the three-metre ­ceilings and high window made that feasible); the other was to have a bed that slid out from under some form of raised sitting area.

The mezzanine is more of a cold-climate option because being close to the ceiling would have been hotter, requiring the air conditioning to be on for more of the year. But as soon as I started sketching out possible options for the sitting area, it became obvious that I was drawing something familiar – a majlis.

Visits to Sheikh Zayed’s old majlis in Al Ain Palace Museum and, later, sultans’ divans in the ­Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, confirmed the appeal. This option also had the ancillary benefit of creating a huge amount of storage room for all my hiking, cycling, mountaineering and skiing equipment.

At home in New Zealand, I used to make my own wooden cabinetry at night classes at a local polytechnic, but that option didn’t exist in Abu Dhabi, so I had to construct my majlis vicariously via the carpenters and metalworkers of Mussaffah.

This was a process that, at times, seemed more like an absurdist comedy than a furniture commission, but through scribbling on scraps of paper, bridging the linguistic divide with mime, retaining a sense of humour and many, many cups of tea, all the components were constructed.

There were still a few amusing hiccups, particularly because the carpenters were used to specifying their work in centimetres and I was used to working in millimetres. When, as part of a larger order, I asked them to make me a shim – a small wedge of wood used as a gap filler – instead of creating one 200mm long, as I had asked, they made one two metres long.

But after about a year, a cost of roughly Dh12,000 and more trips to Mussaffah than I care to think about, I put together the final part of my majlis. Four years later, it’s still a success, whether I’m sitting reading and looking out the window or on one occasion when I had 35 friends visit and we all managed to fit.

The UAE might be better known for big things, but sometimes contentment can be found in the smallest of places.