MUJI Hut: A 9.1-sqm Minimalist Cabin | Hacker News Reader

MUJI Hut: A 9.1-sqm Minimalist Cabin

muji.com

101 pointsdesdiv81 comments

Yeah, I live in a "Tiny Home". It's called a Trailer.

This house has all the amenities. Water, sewage, gas, electricity, central air, internet, storage, kitchen. Like a normal house would have. And since it was made in the '80s , it was also inexpensive. And it's equity; I can claim it for homeowners deduction and can later sell it to get a bigger house.

Oh, but trailers are for poor people. This whole tiny house shit is for rich people who want to be "economical", while showing idiotic extravagance. Of course, a $30k lean-to just goes to show the case. Or $70k for that Minim crap where even a bookshelf is a line-item to add. (We have 6 bookshelves in our 'tiny house', and we didn't have to check a box on a bloated web-app.)

I hope I have many more happy years with my life, and I plan to be right beside her for the rest of my days.

...but if that ever changes, I'm about 99% certain it's trailer time. Makes a lot of sense, for the reasons you list.

I get the impression trailers are very common in the US, is that the case? We have something similar in the UK (we call them mobile homes) but you don't see very many of them, probably because they don't work that well with our climate.

In the US the trailers the parent refers to are not used as "mobile homes" (for vacations etc, what the British would call "caravans" IIRC) but as permanent all-year-round homes, usually for poorer people.

Mobile homes in the UK are usually permanent, something like: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-656753... although I now notice estate agents call them park homes.

>Mobile homes in the UK are usually permanent

They are usually permanently placed, but are they permanent residencies, or more like vacation homes (for people who also have another main residence)?

I had the impression it was the latter from some UK friends I have with one.

The english version of this page omits some of the relevant context here.  

Looks like this is part of a joint initiative led by MUJI and some design firms to commercialize an abandoned school in Chiba Prefecture, Nagao Kindergarten/Elementary School, as a "multipurpose facility". http://www.awashirahama.com/nagao/ (Japanese only, although google translate does reasonably well.)

Basically the concept seems like a get-away for urban hipsters to go experience “rural farm life” or “communal living” just a couple hours away from Tokyo. And by "rural" and "communal" I mean complete with cute little designer huts/cabins, farm-to-table restaurants, and communal bathing/kitchen facilities, which I think gives this hut design/price point a little more context.

In the Japanese version of this page it’s pretty clear the hut is meant exclusively for this project, with more of an after thought that says if you’re interested in having one constructed anywhere else, that they will make an announcement “after Fall 2017”, which in this case is probably Japanese business lingo for “never, unless there is so much demand for it that we can make serious money off of it”.

> experience “rural farm life” or “communal living” just a couple hours away from Tokyo.

You just straw-manned your way into a negative review of the concept. I think the vast majority of people looking at this can clearly see it's not actual rural or traditional communal living, but a relaxed getaway in the outdoors that's easy to get to, with top range locally sourced dining possibilities and an environment that actively encourages social interaction. The site you linked makes no mention of rural farm life or communal living.

It sounds like this isn't your cup of tea (and to be honest it's not exactly mine either), but I love the trend of people repurposing buildings and old spaces rather than knocking them down. I also love the trend of locally grown and sourced food, rather than importing everything. Literally one of the best meals of my life was all locally sourced. Meanwhile most things I buy from the supermarket down the road are imported and taste bland. I hope both these trends continue.

Well, it's certainly "minimalist" and it's a very nice web site, with great photos, but it's quite a stretcher to call that a "radically new concept".

We've been making these here in the Ozarks for generations. They're not considered very hifalutin though. They're called "Hunting Shacks" here. Most have a small wood burning stove inside them and used barn tin for the roof (for style), but the design is the same and darn near as old as the mountains we live in.

The radically new concept is extracting $28,000 for a lean-to design, then barely warranting it for five years. That's just insane. Depending on how swanky the materials, you can build one of these yourself with a couple truckloads of stuff from Lowe's for less than a quarter of that, including laying a polished concrete pad for it.

Note that I'm not saying "hacker culture just compile your own," I'm merely trying to find where the additional cost comes from. They handle the contractor and the plans are already drawn and approved, so that's probably part of it. But still, $28,000? Is Japan that expensive?

What the Tiny House and container living and related movements have taught me is mainly that people will pay a premium for small living spaces that aren't considered "for poors", even if they're worse than, say, a single-wide or a smallish a-frame.

It's the Soylent oven Ensure effect. Same product, different target market.

Soylent and Ensure have different ingredients. They are made for different markets, yes.. But their price is similar.

I think you should either rename your effect or rethink its meaning.

I guess his effect doesn't rely as much on the price difference but on the artificial market differentiation (whether the price is the same or not) for what is essentially a very similar product.

That's exactly it. It's not about the price here but about the fact that one product is hip and cool and one is not.

Just like Toyota and Ford have different components. Ensure actually does have a very similar offering to Soylent even if the ingredients differ a bit.

Does seem kind of high. Pre fab small cabins seem to range from $3k to $8k here in the US. Not cedar, but if the expectation is a 5 year lifetime, that's not really needed. The price multiple for it being a bit more stylish seems steep.

> barely warranting it for five years

Do cars or anything else often have warranties longer than 5 years? Does a regular house have a warranty longer than 5 years?

It's a hint that they do not consider the materials very survivable. Five years is an awfully low lifetime for a permanent living structure, particularly one a contractor had a hand in building. Better to just not offer the warranty than offer five years, in this case, since one wouldn't expect to have to rebuild their home's frame three times before their kids graduate high school.

I get that the intent of this product is different, but not different enough to make the warranty not stand out.

> Do cars or anything else often have warranties longer than 5 years?

Yes, many products have lifetime warranties; cars typically have shorter "bumper-to-bumper" warranties (though, yes, some are longer, too) but very often have key-component warranties that are longer than 5 years.

Houses can come with warranties, more often they are called "maintenance plans" and are really just insurance. You pay for them if you have one, either directly or it's built into the price.

IKEA has 25-year warranties for their kitchens (which I guess counts as part of a house?).

A product's price is mostly a function of demand, not the cost of its raw materials.

Well, demand is only there if they can differentiate from the cheaper options.

You'd be surprised.

Lots of the higher priced products have only marginal (if any) differentiation from cheaper options, sometimes only the brand being it.

That's how you can have $400 plastic "brand name" glasses and $30 "non brand name" glasses that are made in the same chinese factory, with the same plastic materials and quality control, and both owned by the same parent company (e.g. Luxottica).

And let's not get into clothing and wine.

>The radically new concept is extracting $28,000 for a lean-to design, then barely warranting it for five years. That's just insane.

Not to people for which $28.000 is what $2000 is to you and me, which is the intended audience.

My landlord had one guy make a 9x10x8 building like that in our back yard for about $2000. If there were insulation and drywall in there it'd be up to code to live in

It can be a new living concept when equipped with modern gadgetry including low power electrics, and of course mobile computing and communications.

>Well, it's certainly "minimalist" and it's a very nice web site

That website is a monstrosity. You get a blank page with javascript off. When you enable it, it takes about 7 seconds of pinwheel to load anything, at which point you're suddenly assaulted with high volume mood music.

Whenever a website makes my laptop burn up it makes me angry knowing that it's effectively shortening the lifespan of its battery. I hate websites like this.

What you said. Hated the website. When it's all glitzy like that I pretty much check out. I'm more of a fan of the nerdy crappy camera angles but they are showing you how to do something on the cheap. There is a guy on youtube who has helped me repair our subarus, he's awesome. This website was the opposite of that.

> When you enable it, it takes about 7 seconds of pinwheel to load anything,

Huh. I should have waited two more seconds, I didn't think anything was going to happen.

I wonder how many people (like me) think "something's wrong" and move on.

I don't know what they were trying to show. I think I waited till 30 secs or so and all I could see was pastures, streams, mountains, and greenery. Then I realised it's one of those "minimalist" website and gave up.

Googled for images and it turned out to be good old cabin in the woods, maybe readymade.

and it transfers around 70-80Mb if you let the background montage play through

Does the benefit of browsing the web with javascript off outweigh the inconvenience of most of the web not working?

Most of the web that I want to see works just fine without Javascript. A good part of the web that I only sometimes want to see works a lot better without Javascript. It's very seldom that I enable Javascript for a website and afterwards think that it was worth the effort.

Yes.

>That website is a monstrosity. You get a blank page with javascript off.

You also get that with a monitor unplugged.

It's supposed to target affluent customers with fast internet (in particular, Japanese internet, they don't sell outside Japan). If they aren't the picky types that disable their JS, even better.

Is 300Mb synchronous fiber fast enough for you? Puts the 7 second load time in perspective.

Javascript blocking is a fairly basic and widely used tool for internet security these days. Having JS disabled by default is a security choice, not a speed one. It's definitely a sign of poor web design to not at least have a landing page saying "this website relies on scripts, please enable them to view the page".

Of course, since the page is literally just text and pictures, exactly what HTML and CSS were designed for, the fact that it doesn't work at all without javascript and takes 7 seconds to load on a 300Mb connection with them turned, we've got bigger problems. It's honestly like looking at someone who has built an treehouse out of shopping bags and resin, and then attach it to the tree with a powder actuated nailgun. The web designer is definitely using all the wrong tools and ingredients.

>Javascript blocking is a fairly basic and widely used tool for internet security these days.

Fairly basic it is. But it's nowhere near "widely used" in any way that it would impact a businesses sales.

For $28k they want you can get a hunting shack with stove and toilet. I am continually amazed by the tiny house economics.

It's almost as if marketing has a purpose.

Let alone how much of an RV that can get you. Which won't require you to have any tools on-site/available contractors for its construction.

Hmm, disappointing that this is what Muji ended up launching, this looks smaller and simpler than the three designs they showed off in late 2015. [1] Of those three concepts, Naoto Fukasawa’s Wood Hut was my favorite. Two of the designs had plumbing, and Fukasawa's in fact had a pretty awesome looking soaking tub. As it is, like others have mentioned, it's pretty much an overpriced shed.

While it may seem a bit strange, Muji has been building houses since 2000 (english writeup here [2]) that seem reasonable vs the competition (prefab houses are more common in Japan and they can be put up in a day or two - big companies include Misawa and a even subsidiary of Toyota. Their sites are all Japanese, but you can browse the pics to see the quality/design aesthetics (which I quite like). [3] [4]

Someone else mentioned the $71K Minim Home as an alternative in the US (which is pretty nice). An option closer to the Muji Hut pricing (but you know, that one could actually live in) is say the Escape Vista which starts at $39-49K: http://www.escapetraveler.net/vista-vista-go

[1] http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2015/11/06/muji-hut/

[2] http://gizmodo.com/why-buying-entire-pre-designed-houses-cou...

[3] https://www.misawa.co.jp/

[4] http://www.toyotahome-aichi.co.jp/

Just made the depressing transition from looking at Craigslist housing in SF to seeing this. The concept looks great, but it's hard to tell who its for. I assume you need to own the land it's placed on, so how could it be used for vacationing?

The idea of an owned cabin for vacations (or even full second home) is somewhat common (anecdotal). You'd need to own the land, as you pointed out.

It's common in post-commie Eastern Europe and Russia probably because you couldn't travel out of the country back when the commies were in power and it was rather difficult afterwards with visas and everything. So people well off would have a small country/mountain refuge for vacations.

It's also common all over the world. Especially when people live in the city, but have interests/roots in the countryside.

English aristocrats, which all could travel out of UK whenever they wanted, would still have "country houses".

Fwiw I own a duplex in a very popular Oakland neighborhood with something very very similar to this in the back. My cabin is about 190sqft with a full bath. It even has its own private patio which is about another 300sqft.

I am unable to rent it out because it is too small per city rules and it doesn't have a kitchen. I could rent it out illegally, but if there was any dispute with the tenant, the tenant could retaliate by suing me for renting an illegal unit. In a dispute, I could be forced by the city to pay back ALL of the rent said tenant paid to me, ever.

My cabin sits vacant.

That is both stupid and sad. When I was young I rented a single apartment no bigger than that in LA and I loved that place. And I've lived in an Airstream by Castaic Lake that was even smaller and loved it too.

I'm sure you could find a good tenant who'd enjoy living there so it's just insane that's not allowed.

The problem is you never know how people are going to be unless you really know them. I can't afford to take that kind of financial risk on a stranger. The city will fuck me over if anything goes sideways with the tenant.

Well that's too bad. Wouldn't it be possible to Airbnb though?

Unlikely without annoying my other tenants.

Could you rent out a closet in the duplex at a high rate and throw in the cabin for free?

Have you requested a variance to the sqft requirements? How much would it cost to add a kitchen?

> I assume you need to own the land it's placed on, so how could it be used for vacationing?

I suppose it's just for people that can afford that. Like any beach house or holiday home.

>I assume you need to own the land it's placed on, so how could it be used for vacationing?

It's quite common for people to buy a house outside the city (or more) that they vacation too. And whenever they get a chance to relax, they go to that place (as opposed to random travel locations).

This is similar in concept, just with a smaller (and artificially expensive) house.

For $50K USD more, you get substantially more bang for your buck with this Minim House: http://minimhomes.com/

Try $71,000 for the absolute minimum: http://minimhomes.com/buy-the-minim-home/

Yes, which is $50k more

Definitely more substantial, but I'll note that "50k USD more" means "triple the price".

I could see something like this being a good home office one could install in their backyard. However, the price point makes it untenable. Not paying that kind of scratch for a fancy shed.

Side note: MUJI makes some of the best pens I've ever used.

Incredibly expensive. You can already get these sorts of garden rooms/offices, for about 1/3rd of the price. This one costs £21K. Four years ago I ordered a garden office including having two people come and build it for me for about £7K.

Edit: Picture: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mos...

This is just a Tuff Shed with a higher price tag. None of the more difficult problems (running water and septic, for example) have been solved.

You're not kidding. Check out the similarities between this Tuff Shed and the Muji: https://www.tuffshed.com/ones-not-enough-part-2/

Okay, so if you're an architecture/design/materials nerd, this is a cute concept and it's probably not easy for you to get these specific materials at your local home depot.

However, If you have the time, I really recommend you build something like this yourself. It will probably be 10x cheaper. It is not difficult to build something generally like this, and this thing is so tiny it might not require any permit at all. The real fun of this is you could actually use traditional Japanese timber framing methods to build it. You could do more with it too, like make the false floor double as storage, build in a murphy bed that folds up to be a desk, add sliding panels to act as a privacy screen, and a flip-down storm shutter (with solar panels on top!!! let's go crazy) so you don't need to use glass doors. I would also replace that ugly interior plywood with pretty much anything else (even bamboo) with goza mats for carpet.

Also, like someone else mentioned, you don't need that whole porch. It could be extended forward up to the glass (or whatever), with a small cross-section of bamboo as a baseboard where the drop-off occurs, giving more of a natural flow from the inside to the out. The left-hand side could be reserved as the genkan for removing shoes, lowered to add to the aesthetic.

Personally I think this whole idea would have been better served with organic architecture features, rather than looking like a weird ikea shed moved to Japan.

Can someone recommend a long form soundtrack (1+ hour or something) that sounds like that on that website?

edit: Nevermind (youtu.be/Aaz80cOx7OI)

Search for "Kip Mazuy" on Youtube :-)

Thanks. Great recommendation. (I found the youtube url of the soundtrack as well, shared in my original comment).

Is it the hip new thing to want to live in a cabin like this?

I guess only if it's "certified cool" by some fancy brand, but then again MUJI (無印良品) literally translates to "No Brand Quality Goods", so who knows?

Quite expensive for what it is, no toilet/kitchenette as well? Uff. But man, great design, gotta say. Good idea, I'd add a kitchen and a toilet and get it all done for half the price in the south of Chile.

Check out https://getaway.house/ if you're in NYC or Boston and interested in renting a tiny house for the weekend.

There's a swedish company that does houses in a similar style to this, at least close enough to remind me of them.

Unfortunately the website is only in swedish as far as I can see, but the photos should translate:

http://www.levahusfabrik.se/gallery/

Does anyone know what the point is of wasting floor space on a porch when the actual interior is so small? Seems to me that type of floor space that is only sometimes useful would be one of the very first things to go.

I love seeing these cool concepts for tiny houses, but why not use every available bit of floor space?

Great if there are actual place you can put it, but people in Hong Kong cant even rent a place as large as this tiny MUJI home for less then $750 USD per month.

$28k for a shack with what looks like a wood burning stove?

Lol, with such big windows you'll get attacked in no time

I saw the comments here describing pricing, but all I saw was a slideshow with no text and no pictures of the cabin. I finally viewed the source and realized I had to scroll. No one else was baffled? Clearly it's time for bed...

you know what this entire industry needs?

a professional to help you permit and utility-ize this thing as part of the purchase cost or an add-on service. make me feel warm and fuzzy that i can actually execute on this project of buying some land and changing my living situation.

anyone can build or buy a nice little luxury shack. actually living in it on a piece of land legally is the challenging part.

Calm - Meditation made simple https://www.calm.com/

Rainy Mood - Helps you to focus, relax, and sleep http://www.rainymood.com/

Sorry for Off-Topic posts above. I just want a simple way to do meditation and can't wait to build a cabin. Same purpose, different approach I think.

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