How many meters do we need for happiness?

Article from A&B issue 05|2023

The search for an answer to this question brought me, or rather us - my family of five - to live in the Nest - our micro-home - perched on the banks of the Dead Vistula River. Together with my wife and three children, we spent more than two years, existing on 27 square meters of living space. We managed to create in this space a fourteen-meter living room with a kitchenette, a bathroom with a shower and an alcove for a washing machine, one separate room with a sleeping alcove, and two mezzanines with double mattresses. In the original plans, all the sleeping spaces were to be within one open space, but on hearing that another toddler would be coming into our family, we decided to separate the enclosed room. Having previously lived in an 80-square-meter apartment with two sons and two bedrooms, we felt that wherever we went, that's where our entire family was concentrated. So we blithely decided that these free square meters were simply unnecessary, and the deficit of space was to compensate us for the view from the large window of the swans swimming right next door.

first floor and mezzanine floor plans and sections

proj.: HAG Human Architecture Group

During the summer, our life largely took place on the terrace, around the bungalow. The module itself remained mainly a bedroom. In the winter it was a bit more difficult. Admittedly, we spent our working days mostly outside the module, in the offices, the boys in kindergarten, and on weekends we enjoyed escaping to the outdoors or dropping in on our friends for tea. The hardest part of this whole period, however, were the two winter quarantine weeks that we were forced to spend together at the cottage, while trying to work remotely for several hours a day, keeping in touch with the office. It was probably the large window through which we could look out at the calming movement of the rippling water that saved us from the serious mental consequences of this confinement.

Of course, space needs are largely determined by how the household functions, the intensity and type of activities we perform at home. How much are our four walls the center of our lives, and how much are they the bedroom we return to at night? How often do we cook at home, are we in the habit of inviting a large circle of friends over, are we homemakers by nature, or do we rather like to wander around visiting friends. For us, these two years have been a challenge, but above all a time filled with a positive climate of closeness. This experience has shown us that those average 5 square meters of apartment space per person in the long run, however, is not very comfortable. On the one hand, the growing up of children, the entry of the eldest son into school age, on the other hand, our longing for the opportunity to hide sometimes in the safe enclave of a closed room, without having to leave the house, made us decide to move to an apartment with a standard size.

The living room - we spent most of our time on the 14 square meters of living space

photo: Tomasz Bogusz

The question, however, is to what extent are our needs created by the environment in which we grew up, and to what extent are they anthropologically determined? Is it not by chance that our desire for larger apartments is one of the many needs that are part of the consumerist universe of our time? Looking at the conditions of habitation in different regions of the world, I noticed that in most cases the areas of houses were definitely smaller than the commonly accepted standards for Europeans. Good examples are the homes of the Huaorani people in Ecuador, as well as the reed huts of the Aymara and Ketchua peoples on the border between Bolivia and Peru, or the villages of the San Blas archipelago, or at least the traditional Fijian homes or Masai shelters in Tanzania. Wherever lifestyles are not determined by consumer aspirations, the area of houses per capita is significantly smaller. This is also confirmed by the studies of anthropologists, who point out that in non-industrial societies, one person occupied an average of 6 square meters of living space, by comparison, today in Poland, there is more or less 30 square meters per citizen. Perhaps smaller dwellings and more frequent open space or common areas where we could socialize would be closer to our nature.

Eurostat statistics - number of rooms per person in Europe

© Eurostat

However, studies by environmental psychologists show that there are limits beyond which overcrowding has a negative impact on residents. To determine the rate of overcrowding, the ratio of the number of residents to the number of rooms is most often used. However, this indicator does not take into account the size of rooms or what counts as a room. Depending on the country and the entity compiling the statistics, we can find different approaches to these aspects. For example, statistics compiled by Eurostat consider a room to be a separate space with a minimum height of 2 meters and an area of at least 4 square meters, in which we can insert a bed for an adult person. The impact of overcrowded housing on each of us depends largely on cultural backgrounds and how much time we spend indoors. The age and gender of the occupants is also not insignificant. Studies show that those living in apartments with more than 1.5 people per room can experience social and psychological problems. Most studies on the effects of high density have been conducted in well-controlled housing conditions, such as boarding schools and prisons. The conclusions of the studies pointed to negative effects in the form of stress, over-stimulation, poorer well-being and reduced psychological well-being. Individuals living in highly dense environments were overstimulated and their response was social withdrawal. The experiments conducted show that frustration resulting from the inability to withdraw and alienate in a crowded environment has a particularly negative impact. What is important here is the ability to achieve the level of privacy we desire at any given time. Analyzing the results of the researchers' research, it can be concluded that the limited size of the apartments in which we sleep should compensate for the possibility to realize the need for seclusion outside the home.

In the module there was no room for a Christmas tree, which does not mean that we had to give it up

Photo: Tomasz Bogusz

In the case of our house, a glass wall in the common space with a view of the Dead Vistula River had a significant positive impact on our well-being. Such close contact with nature, the view of rippling water, watching seagulls, piping plovers or diving cormorants always calmed us down. The very architecture of the interior we arranged was also important, where we took the liberty of limiting the height of the places where we slept to about a meter, but in the living space the height of the room far exceeded 3 meters. Separating a small lockable room, although not originally included in the design, turned out to be a good idea. Each of us hid there more than once in search of seclusion.

We had two mezzanine floors, each with a double mattress

Photo: Tomasz Bogusz

In Poland, few people choose to minimize their living space to such an extreme as we experienced. Although memories of childhood, of living in small, crowded apartments with grandparents or cousins, often came up in conversations with friends, we currently find no one in our immediate vicinity who comes close to the level of having less than 6 square meters of living space per person. On a broader level, statistics confirm this. The surface area of apartments per person has increased by almost a third in Poland in the last twenty years. However, this is still far below the European average. Looking at the statistics, we see that we have, on a par with Romania, the lowest ratio of rooms per person, at 1.1, where the EU average is 1.6, and in countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium the ratio exceeds 2.0 (source: Eurostat 2021). The fact is that the countries at the top of this list are also among those with the vast majority of the population living at home (about 80 percent), although this is not the rule. An example is Spain, where the per capita room ratio is very high at 2.0, and 65.7 percent of the population lives in apartments. According to the systematics adopted by Eurostat, any dwelling is defined as overcrowded if it does not meet any of the following conditions: it has at least one room per adult, each pair of same-sex children between the ages of twelve and seventeen has one room, and for children of different sexes two rooms, respectively, and one room for each pair of younger children. In the case of our family, this would be four rooms. According to Eurostat's assumptions, one in three Poles currently lives in an overcrowded apartment, which does not look good compared to Europe. The average number of people living in too-small apartments was 17 percent in the European Union in 2021. However, our situation looks much better if we consider the global scale. Here we are in the middle of the index. In countries such as India and Pakistan, on average, three people live in each room. So the current question remains, should we strive to improve our situation, or are current housing conditions comfortable enough? Analyzing the British Household Panel Survey, which has been conducted for decades, Chris Foye proves that changing to a larger apartment does not increase our subjective well-being in the long term. And although immediately after the move, respondents declared an improvement in their quality of life, five years down the road the extra rooms had no effect on their level of satisfaction. Interestingly, the only aspect that seemed to have a slight but lasting positive effect on well-being after changing to a larger apartment was the increase in respondents' social status. It seems interesting that this tendency, however, only applied to men. This is another example of how the search for more living space is not necessarily objectively justified, and is often dictated by the need to mark status in a materialistic society. This is also mentioned by Erzo F.P. Luttmer in his research, which shows that we feel quite comfortable in our homes, as long as our neighbors do not have properties larger than ours.

The only separate, lockable room in the module

Photo: Tomasz Bogusz

There are also ecological and economic aspects in favor of choosing smaller houses. Although the example of the two years spent in the module is quite extreme, it perfectly illustrates the impact that the reduction of living space had on the environment. During the two years we lived in the Nest for all our needs (heating, air conditioning, cooking, lighting and so on) we consumed a total of less than 12,000 kWh of electricity, where the average energy consumption for a family of five in a 150-square-meter house heated with a heat pump was about 20,000 kWh during the same period. This means that the carbon footprint we generated was 40 percent lower. Regulations in Poland set norms for the energy performance of a building based on its surface area. Currently, from the point of view of building law and assessing the environmental impact of buildings, it is more desirable for a couple living in a 200-square-meter villa to consume even less hot water than a family of four living in a 120-square-meter house with the same building envelope parameters. Although realistically, on a per capita basis, the environmental costs of both building and operating a house will be three times higher.

it was not the number of meters behind, but the direction in which our eyes looked that determined our well-being

Photo: Tomasz Bogusz

We have now doubled the size of the space we inhabit, and while our sons are happy to have their own room and more freedom to invite friends over, at the same time they often mention that they miss the 27 square meters of our Nest. We are also in the process of building a target house at the module site. With a bit of luck, maybe in a year's time we will be able to see if raising the housing standard to the European average will change the level of our well-being.

Tomasz BOGUSZ

photos: author