Why Does This 30m² Architect Cabin Feel Twice Its Size?

Ark Shelter Cabin, Stavele, Belgium

In their third year of architecture school, Michiel and Martin pitched one idea: build a house in a factory and deliver it to the site finished. Their professor did not follow them. They could not let it go. They kept drawing after class, built the first units themselves, and turned the rejected project into Ark Shelter, a company that now places cabins across Europe.

This is one of the very first ones. Nine metres by three, alone in a field near Stavele in West Flanders, hidden behind a line of trees, with a dock and a rowing boat on the water.

From the outside it is a quiet black box. Then you walk around the corner and the short wall is a single three metre window with the bed floating behind it, facing the fields. The frames are sunk into the walls, the ceiling and the floor, so nothing interrupts the view. Slide open the two facing windows and 30 square metres start to feel like 60.

The best details are the ones you are not meant to notice. The lighting is hidden so the ceiling and the wall never meet in a sharp edge. In front of the fireplace the oak floor drops a few centimetres under a flush glass plate, so the floor reads as one surface and no ember ever touches the wood. In the shower, a frameless mirror window puts you outside with the horses and the sheep, and nobody can see in.

Two thirds of the cabin is for living and sleeping, one third for the kitchen and bathroom. Built for two. Rented out for years, it now holds 4.99 out of 5 from more than 300 stays and Airbnb's Guest Favourite badge.

"You are in a tiny building, but you have the feeling that you are really in an apartment."

Architecture by Ark Shelter
Filmed by Into the Wild Houses