circuit box minimal dwelling by studio x design group lara rettondini and oscar brito from italy

The continuous reduction of the inhabited unit and a more and more free conception of the domestic environment have carried to a progressive spatial integration and to an increasing request of flexibility. This new scene has directly conditioned the concept of Living that is not more only a room of the house but it has become the house itself, incorporating several functions within it. A single space like this, adapted to a life style without barriers, demands a such versatility to enable a mix of uses and activities that involve several times a day the transformation of one same ambience from public to private and vice versa.

Following this trend and imagining a not so far away future, we have studied a system of multifunctional furnishings that we have called Circuit Box. It consists of a compact unit containing all the necessary elements to live in a minimal space, which may be plugged to it like an electric circuit.

Circuit Box is composed from a series of rings of gradually decreasing measures, nested one inside the other like a matrioska doll. The larger ring should be anchored to a wall and contains within it fixed services like the kitchen and the bath, besides acting as the container of all the other rings. The following internal smaller rings are movable, hanging to a track rail system along which they slide passing one through the other, each one of them may be equipped with a series of accessories upon the user’s requirements. The rings may be combined and gathered, enabling one extremely adaptable and dynamic situation, leaving the maximum freedom of choose between the multiple possible arrangements.

The flexible characteristics of Circuit Box allow to adapt the space to various activities: extracting, placing and arranging rings opportunely the ambience can be transformed from time to time to several uses like lunch, office, bedroom or anything else answering anytime to the needs of living on a already present future.

CircuitBox won the competition "open living in container" organized by the Italian Trade Commission; a basic prototype of this concept has been built within a shipping container at the Tokyo Designer’s Week 2004.