A four-foot-wide space between two buildings in Warsaw, Poland has become the world’s thinnest house. Architect Jakub Szczesny built a series of vertical spaces into the void including a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and lounge area.

Keret House will function as a place for artist residencies lasting from five to seven days. Its size prevents it from being considered a full-time residence. Szczesny, who has been working on the narrow home for three years, was inspired by the work of Israeli writer Etgar Keret, who writes extremely short stories.

You might imagine that such a thin house, crammed between two large buildings, would feel dark and claustrophobic inside. But a transparent roof, open stairways and a wall of windows enable lots of sunlight to stream inside. The house is set about ten feet above the ground, is 33 feet in depth and about 30 feet tall.

Keret House may hold the unofficial record as the slimmest house in the world, but it’s hardly alone in its narrow quirkiness. Other thin homes include a 9-foot-wide, three-story residence in Brazil, the Wedge House in Scotland and a whole series of ultra-narrow buildings in Japan.

Architecture doesn’t have to be grand to be impressive, as the six winners of the 2011 AIA Small Project Awards demonstrate. Ranging from a tiny tea house to a colorful walkway at a New York City public school, these structures show that architecture can be well-thought-out at any scale. The winners include the PS 234 Manhattan Walkway (pictured above), the Layton Pavilion, Meditation Hut III “Victor”, the Tea House, the Kiwi House and E.D.G.E. (Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment.)

PS 234 Manhattan Walkway

This brightly colored steel walkway connects the main building of New York City’s Independence School (PS 234) to a kindergarten Annex. Providing shelter from the elements, the L-shaped walkway is made of 4″x4″ red painted steel posts with rectangular and trapezoidal powder coated perforated metal panels in four colors. The arrangement allows natural light inside, and affords a view of the play yard outside.

Layton Pavilion by Johnsen Schmaling Architects

The Layton Pavilion brings a little quiet elegance to an otherwise unremarkable space – a vacant, walled-in, undevelopable brownfield adjacent to a strip mall parking lot. Architects Johnsen Schamling call it “a small architectural intervention embedded in the spatial vacuum of suburbia,” saying “Surrounded by an abundance of aesthetic timidity and literally leading from nowhere to nowhere, the pavilion itself becomes the destination, a reinterpretation of the archetypal folly in the park that offers a series of basic visceral and corporeal experiences rarely found in this context: the sudden spatial compression when entering; the controlled framing of views and vistas, through slits, walls, and roof; an occupiable object carefully scaled to be encountered by walking people, not speeding cars; the polished concrete planes, their tangible solidity and material authenticity a peculiar exception in an environment dominated by the antiseptic shallowness of thin veneers. “

Meditation Hut III “Victor” by Jeffrey S. Poss Architect

Jeffrey S. Poss’ dynamic meditation hut looks as if it could fly away at any moment. The structure, which is located in Champaign, Illinois, contains little more than a miniature tea cabinet and three tatami mats. A place of silence and solitude, the hut provides an ideal vantage point from which to observe and enjoy the surrounding nature, including a small pond.

Tea House by David Jameson Architect

Inspired by the form of a Japanese lantern, the Tea House by David Jameson Architect also functions as a meditation space and stage for the family’s musical recitals. Located in the backyard of a suburban home in Bethesda, Maryland, the Tea House seems to hover above the ground in its nest of bamboo. “After experiencing the image of the lantern as a singular gem floating in the landscape, one is funneled into a curated procession space between strands of bamboo that is conceived to cleanse the mind and prepare one to enter the object.”

Kiwi House by Plus One

Bright and open, the Kiwi House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a modern interpretation of the shotgun house, built for just $98 per square foot. The house was designed to fit in with the other homes in the neighborhood, bolstering an existing sense of community, while also treading lightly on natural resources.

E.D.G.E. Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment by Revelations Architects

This 480-square-foot home is an adaptable structure with a sleeping loft, living space and kitchen, fitting many functions into a space that’s less than one-third the size of an average home. The E.D.G.E. house features rainwater harvesting, geothermal heating and cooling, heat recovery ventilation, passive solar design and insulated shutter doors that help control heat gain.

When airplanes have made their last flight, ships are no longer seaworthy and school buses are finished ferrying children to and fro, where do they go to die? Many end up in object graveyards, but some get reincarnated into strange and amazing residences. These 13 converted homes make use of a surprising array of decommissioned vehicles including rail cars, subway carriages, horse boxes and 727s.

Plane Crazy Addition to Apartment in Russia

(images via: english russia)

Sticking out of the side of what looks like a dilapidated Soviet apartment building is a bit of an unusual sight: the front end of a plane. This bizarre airplane conversion seems to be simply adding some space to a unit inside. It’s certainly a creative use of a decommissioned plane.

Converted Rail Car Home in Portland, Oregon

(images via: apartment therapy)

This 1949 Portland sleeper car may not be housing passengers as they cross the Northwest by rail any longer, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer useful. It’s been converted into a sleek and modern home complete with a bedroom, living room, electric kitchen, DSL and an incinerator toilet. It’s surprisingly roomy at 807 square feet with 10-foot ceilings and went up for sale at $225,000 in 2009.

School Bus Conversion by Von Slatt

(images via: vonslatt)

Steampunk enthusiast Jake Von Slatt completely transformed an old 75-seater yellow school bus into a beautiful rolling home with a vintage feel. Von Slatt used mostly recycled and salvaged materials to renovate the 35-foot bus, which includes a salon, kitchen, bathroom, bunk room and master bedroom.

Plane Suite at Hotel Costa Verde, Costa Rica

(images via: costa verde)

At the Costa Verde hotel in lush tropical Costa Rica, you can experience the luxury of a multi-million-dollar private jet – for the night – without ever taking off. The hotel’s 727 suite consists of a vintage 1965 Boeing airframe once used by South Africa Air, which has been converted to include two bedrooms. Perched on a 50-foot pedestal, the suite has the kind of views that will almost make you feel like you’re flying, after all.

London Tube Carriages

(images via: london underground, village underground)

Perched atop more conventional buildings in the Shoreditch area of London are a few disused Tube carriages that have been converted to offices and studio space as part of a community called Village Underground. The carriages, which are still covered in graffiti, have become an area landmark.

Boeing 727 House in Mississippi

(images via: superuse)

Yet another Boeing 727 has landed in an unexpected place: lakeside in small-town Mississippi. Jo Ann Ussery bought the decommissioned plane when ice-laden trees flattened her conventional wooden house, and spent $24,000 renovating it into her dream home. The tail is anchored in 18 inches of concrete and the nose sticks out over the lake. Inside are three bedrooms, a living/dining room, a fully-equipped kitchen, a laundry area and a master bathroom with a Jacuzzi in the old cockpit.

Steampunk Submarine Room

(images via: geeky gadgets)

Unfortunately, this steampunk wonder was not crafted from a real submarine – but by the looks of it, it might as well have been. Homeowner Wayne Eyre turned his den into a ‘Steampunk Submarine Room’ designed to look like a real submarine complete with ‘plutonium leaking’ torpedoes

Converted Horse Box

(images via: into the hermitage)

A wooden ‘horse box’, as they call them in the UK, served as a quirky handmade home on wheels for a nomadic couple traveling through England and Scotland. The travelers gave the Bedford TK horse box beautiful reclaimed church windows and a dutch door, with the inside meticulously organized in order to fit as much function into the tiny space as possible. Construction of the room came at no small cost – about $72,000 USD.

Green Cedar Bus

(images via: deorwoodworking)

How adorable is the Green Cedar Bus, a school bus that’s been converted into a highly detailed and customized home? The old Bluebird bus has the same level of craftsmanship that you’d expect to see in a more conventional home, including hand-carved wood trim on the rooftop expansions, stained glass windows, mosaic countertops and wood flooring.

Cute Sheep Wagon Homes

(images via: idaho sheep camp)

Want to live out the classic computer game Oregon Trail in real life? Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound so appealing, given the dysentery and all. But hey, living in a covered wagon could actually be a pretty fun novelty. A company in Idaho converts sheep wagons into canvas-covered homes that come with memory foam mattresses, 110-volt outlets for gadgets, pull-out dining tables and even antique wood stoves.

Docked Ship in Dixie, Florida

(images via: micki p)

Raised on a wooden platform to give it a view of the ocean, this boat in Dixie, Florida was originally built to be used on the water, but never did make it in. As it was being built, the man who owned the land it sat on decided he wanted to turn it into a home. It’s become a point of interest on Horseshoe Beach, and also serves as a perch for osprey and other birds.

727 Airplane Home in Oregon

(images via: inhabitat)

When these images first went around the internet, removed of their context, many people wondered what the story could possibly be about this plane, seemingly plopped down in the woods in the middle of nowhere with no explanation as to how it could have gotten there. The plane is, in fact, Oregonian man Bruce Campbell’s dream home, and to get it to his rural property, he disassembled it, trucked it in and then put it back together. Rather than totally transforming the inside, as many other plane-to-home owners do, Campbell (not that Bruce Campbell, FYI) kept as many of the original components as possible.

Ship Residence, Put-in-Bay, Ohio

(images via: wikimedia commons)

The way this boat is set on the edge of a lake, it almost seems like it could have been swept up there by high water during a storm. In fact, it was carefully placed on Ohio’s South Bass Island in Lake Erie using a number of cranes by a couple who couldn’t bear to see the magnificent residence inside the boat scrapped when it was decommissioned in 1986. Built by Henry Ford for his grandson, the Benson Ford boat features walnut-paneled state rooms, a galley, dining room and passenger lounge.

Looking like a prop from a Tim Burton film, the little structure lives up to its name: Beetle’s House. It stands on four slightly off-kilter legs presenting its charred pine wood exterior, like the protective shell of an insect, and seems as if it could get up and walk away at any moment.

Artist Terunobu Fujimori created the tiny building for the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the exhibition “1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces”. Fujimori, who didn’t even begin designing buildings until the age of 44, explains that burning the outer layers of the wood makes it naturally waterproof and pest-proof. The whimsical interior of the tea house features minimal furnishings and artistically arranged pieces of charred wood on the walls and ceiling.

“The recurring theme which I play with in my work is the relationship with the natural world and what human beings  have created. I go about this by using natural materials, such as trees and soil in the building of my homes and also by using plants within the buildings.”

Fujimori designed another very similar treehouse in Japan, featured in the video below.

Terunobu Fujimori, Tokyo, Japan – Beetle’s House from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

“The focus of my work relates back to architecture before civilization. How people originally lived, in their natural environment, which is a key subject of my architectural works… I want to create a space that we can enjoy away from our everyday lives, a space with a small fire where people can enjoy tea.”

(Check out our complete collection of 70 Amazing Houses from Around the World.)

Would it surprise you to learn that a number of houses around the world, from New York to Amsterdam and Brazil to Britain have various claims to being the skinniest house in the world? Some are the skinniest by frontage measurements, others by widest or narrowest space, though they would all (it would seem) require extremely creative urban furniture.

Helenita, the woman pictured in the images above, designed this incredibly narrow house in Madre de Deus, Brazil. Though only 9 feet wide, this house is a remarkable 30 feet (3 stories) tall. The structural physics of this building were surely a challenge, though the designer and resident is clearly proud of her creation.

This London, England house (left above) is just 5 feet at its narrowest, and 10 feet at its widest, and was sold for nearly a million dollars. Likewise extreme expensive, 72 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, USA (right above), which has been everything from a cobbler’s shop to a candy factory, dates back to 1873. However, the actual narrowest house in the United States is located in Long Beach, California.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands To anyone who has visited Amsterdam it should come as no shock that all four of the above candidates are located along the city’s canals. Notorious already for it’s tightly-packed and skinny structures, these buildings push even the limits of Amsterdam. The bottom image is of a house located along the Singel canal that just barely manages to fit a front on the street, though the house expands as it recedes from the street.

Great Cumbrae, Scotland is home to the Guinnes Book of Records title holder for the skinniest house frontage in the world, at just 47 inches at its narrowest. The so-called Wedge house, once it was discovered to hold the record, sold to a family from Essex as a vacation home for an undisclosed sum of money.

Location, Unknown: this house remains a mystery, though the original blogger appears to be located in Osaka, Japan. However, the street signage and other visual clues suggest it could also be located somewhere in Europe. If anyone has an idea as to where this house is located, please feel free to add a link or note in the comments! Update: the house is indeed located in Osaka, Japan!

Still, as thin as these buildings are, they are still probably a great deal more comfortable than at least some alternatives, such as urban camping or car living. If you think staying in a 6-foot-wide house or apartment sounds horrific, also consider this: at least you aren’t living in the infamous tunnel house! Feel free to add links to relevant narrow-house images or videos below.