Milan, the municipality owns several hundreds of proletarian houses to be allocated to individuals or families with low incomes on the homeless citizens waiting list. 

These flats - some new, some others to be renovated - are scattered around the city and characterised by a surface area per capita that is smaller than the one permitted by the Italian law. Thanks, and despite such feature, the renting cost of these spaces is kept very low.

 

Because of Expo 2015, some of these under threshold flats had to be destined to the role of short-stay accommodations for young people with a limited budget who were expected to come to Milan to work at the Universal Expo pavilions and need cheap lodgings for few months.  
With this purpose, our working team was assigned a 23 sqm room to be transformed into an hotel-apartment that could host a worker who would have been busy for most of the day and lived the space mentioned above more like a hostelry indeed than a proper house.  

The project, especially the checkered floor and the sharp chromatic contrast, was inspired by Philippe Starck's eccentric and fascinating style and by his love for entertainment and fun. The room is organised as a private exhibition space, keeping into consideration the likely needs and habits of its sole resident, often out at meals time because of his job. The kitchen dimensions are reduced to the minimum, utensils and clothes are "exhibited" on the walls, and a sliding glass element allows to keep alternately open either the bathroom or the kitchen, both overlooking on the day-and-night area. The protagonist of the open space is a turning round element combining the functions of bed, table, desk and cabinet.