Regular readers of this blog will know that I am huge fan of the YouTube channel Never Too Small. I have seen most of their episodes and I like to tell people about it even when it is only remotely related to the conversation at hand.

I love the urbanity of it all. There is just something so satisfying about turning constrained spaces into homes that are both beautiful and functional. It also makes you question how much space you really need.

But if constraints aren't your thing, and you'd like to see a wider variety of homes, another great channel to check out is The Local Project. The homes -- which are all in Australia and New Zealand -- are equally as beautiful, but tend to be more, uh, extensive. See above video.

What are some other channels worth checking out? It seems to me like Canada needs something similar to The Local Project. Maybe it already exists.

Never Too Small remains one of my favorite YouTube channels. And I have written about their videos before on the blog. The homes that they feature on their channel are generally below 600 square feet or so, and most of them are well below this mark. Some have even been designed for young families.

One of the common strategies that you'll see with small floor plans is that the bedroom is often reduced to only what is necessary for sleeping and it is often inset within the home, away from any exterior glass. As an example, here are before and after screenshots from a 318 sf apartment in London (link to video).

Before:

After:

In this case, the bedroom was pulled away from the apartment's bay window and a small mezzanine level was created. This makes a lot of sense since the bay window is kind of a main feature -- one that, I think, is better reserved for a primary living space. They also flipped the kitchen up against the other window, rescuing it from the bowels of the apartment.

If I had been the one tasked with redesigning this apartment, this is a floor plan that I could see myself landing on. But here's the thing. All things being equal, I think most people would prefer a bedroom with a window. And even when all things aren't equal, a lot of people seem willing to compromise on their main living space so that they still get one (see before plan).

So before you go ahead and watch the NTS video, I'm curious: Which do you prefer? Would pick the before plan or the after plan given these two options?

Alexis Self has an opinion piece in today's Monocle Minute (email newsletter) that deals with development in London and NIMBYism. Here's an excerpt:

Affluent, socially liberal city dwellers can be the most extreme Nimbys. But perhaps their ire wouldn’t be so fierce if what was being built weren’t so aesthetically offensive. In the postwar era, London’s councils teemed with ambitious urban planners. The result: design classics such as Trellick Tower in Kensal Green, the Barbican Estate and Camden’s Alexandra Road Estate. While it’s true that these were labelled ugly at the time, they were undeniably the work of Europe’s best architects. Few, if any, of the city’s 21st-century edifices will enjoy a similar reappraisal.

Alexis raises two interesting points: 1) Could better architecture and design actually help to quash NIMBY sentiment and 2) are we really not designing and building like we used to?

I'll start with number two.

I am not that familiar with the "design classics" that Alexis mentions above, but it just so happens then when I was watching Never Too Small over the weekend I came across this studio apartment in the Barbican Estate.

Designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in the 1960s, the Barbican is a residential complex with somewhere around 2,000 apartments. It's considered a prominent example of British brutalist architecture and so most of it is listed.

While certainly noteworthy, it strikes me that it is likely one of those pieces of architecture that designers and architects love (I like it), but that the general public dislikes. In fact, architect Witold Rybczynski once argued that, "if people don't hate it, it can't be Brutalist."

Brutalism is having a bit of a renaissance. Kind of. But I don't think we're anywhere near universal appreciation. So I wonder if the general public really views these "design classics" as being some sort of golden era of British architecture and development.

I also think, and I have argued this before on the blog, that buildings sometimes take time to settle in. From Montreal to Stockholm, our perceptions have been shown to change. The things we disliked before suddenly become desirable.

Which means it can be hard to tell if we objectively dislike something (we're not building like we used to) or if it's simply not old enough for us to starting appreciating it. Beauty also happens to be a kind of subjective thing when it comes to buildings. Turns out we're better at assessing whether people are good looking.

This is probably a good time to come back to point number one: Could better architecture help quash NIMBYism?

Not quite. I would argue that it certainly helps but it won't completely quash it. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of great design. I want everything to be beautiful and considered. But the cynical developer in me knows that it will sadly only go so far.

Béton brut (raw concrete) isn't for everyone, I guess.