See how you can live in just 8sq.m

HOW much space do you need to live in? With a city-wide shortage of accommodation in Paris a French architect’s practice has come up with a video of how to live in a micro-studio of just 8sq.m.

And that 8m2 includes the bathroom.

Large flats in Paris often came with a tiny flat for the maid but while many students would be delighted to have such a perfectly organised space in the expensive city it is actually below the 9m2 legal minimum floor space for a rental flat.

However, Kitoko Studio’s ingenious Swiss-Army knife-like arrangements of cupboards, steps, bed, kitchen and the bathroom are worth highlighting to show what is possible in such a tiny space.

Half of the room is taken up with a cupboard which contains drawers with different uses. One at the top contains the bed, which is accessed by a drawer that pulls out to reveal bookshelves and steps, while another becomes a table with stools. Alongside it is a wet-room shower and lavatory.

Kitoko, based in Caen in Normandy, put a video online at Vimeo.com of the flat which is in the 17th arrondissement.

One of the designers, Gaylor Lasa Zingui, said they had been inspired by Japanese design ideas for small spaces. The whole project had taken four months.

The tiny flat is used by the Paris owners for their au pair.