David Tapias (Aixopluc founder) and Ricard Pau installed their first experimental home inside a former photographer’s studio that had been vacant for 2 years. To maximize the 50-square-meter (538-square-foot) space they placed all the installations to one side – kitchen, sinks, toilet, and shower- leaving the rest of the space open for a dining table and an indoor cabin that they call a “tiniest house”, which is exactly the size of a bed.

The Tiniest House, as well as the Homeful “enclosures” (walls, floors, ceilings, doors) and cabinets, are created from plywood boxes that can be assembled and disassembled by hand. The system relies on wooden pegs which serve many functions: sliders for drawers, support for shelving or tabletops, hooks for kitchenware, and knobs for cabinets.

The stand-alone furniture in the home – chairs, tables, benches, stools – is built from LEGO-like CNC-cut pieces that fit together without glue or screws and can be rearranged to go from chair to table to bench to tiny house.

Vacant homes in old towns are prone to decay, but can they also be an affordable option for people to live in? David Tapias and Ricard Pau built a system that upcycles small apartments with modular transformer furniture.

In a country with 3.4 million empty homes (of 11 million total in the EU), architects Aixopluc have created a solution to quickly and affordably make an abandoned property habitable. They call it “Homeful” and it’s a modular furniture system that can be reconfigured to make small spaces serve multiple purposes.

The Alfondac apartment is open to those interested in testing it.