This project is an exploration into the concept of minimum home, not as a fixed product, but as a living process of an ever-changing construction that evolves with time, memory, and inhabitation. The idea of “minimum” is redefined for today’s complex world: not as smallness in size, but as the essential means needed for an individual to create a sense of home in space and time. Through a study of memory, spatial arrangements, and collective narratives, home-making becomes an act that integrates personal and communal.

Building on this theoretical ground, the design proposal envisions a new housing system for East Tilbury, Essex, where flexible, expandable cores form the basis of a contemporary minimum home. Each dwelling begins with a compact service unit and grows over time with customised plug-in spaces, adapting to the inhabitants’ needs, resources, and habits. A shared “memory façade” and community spaces at the heart of each cross-shaped structure embody collective life, while the overall system negotiates the shifting landscape of the Thames Estuary and its flood risks. In the long term, the project aspires to create a resilient urban fabric -an architecture that records memory, supports adaptability, and redefines the relationship between minimum living and community-making, while capturing the shifting landscapes and multi-layered memories of Essex within its evolving form.

Credits

Design Team: Eleni Vagianou

Awards

B-Pro Show 2017 Bronze Prize - Bartlett School of Architecture