The Tiny Project

Growing up on a small island shaped the way I think about architecture — not only as a profession, but as something tied to society, culture, and place. Large-scale structures are not always suitable for the environmental and spatial conditions of my country, so I wanted this project to explore a more sustainable and flexible way of living through a compact modular system with a small "tiny house" volume.

The starting point of the project was the abacus, a childhood toy that first made me enjoy mathematics. Its repetitive and movable structure inspired the modular logic of the design, leading me to think of architecture as a system that can shift, repeat, and adapt. Each sphere is a self-sufficient living module containing the essential functions of everyday life, alongside small areas for growing vegetables and fruits and for small-scale animal care, encouraging a more sustainable, nature-oriented lifestyle.

Each unit is enclosed by an outer shell covered with solar panels, allowing it to generate its own energy. The modules are connected through a movable rail system, so by periodically shifting positions each unit can receive an equal amount of sunlight and benefit fairly from solar energy production.

Earlier studies began from everyday objects — a kitchen chair, folded paper, a kettle — testing how the form of a familiar object could be translated into a compact living space. Alternative versions explored a butterfly, a fan, a pine cone, and an octopus, each transforming sunlight into usable energy through its own structural logic while also providing shade and cooling. Though these are slightly utopian in relation to real-world conditions, they demonstrate an ability to develop ideas from different starting points — important in architecture, where imagination and innovation play a key role.

As the final step, I built a physical model, photographed it under different lighting conditions, and created an animation to present the project in a more mechanical, realistic way — drawing the rail system digitally as a vector diagram and combining it with photographs of each unit to show movement, structure, and overall mechanics.