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MINI living 2017: urban cabin.

Do you have an eye for design and a passion for creativity? Step this way to discover what we did at the 2017 London Design Festival. Renowned architect Sam Jacob was brought on board to bring a very special MINI LIVING project to one of London’s most iconic locations.

The 2017 installation was an Urban Cabin; a minimalist space that we filled with millions of words. It was a celebration of London culture and at its core, London literature. Guests joined us to celebrate by exploring our library and even shared their favourite London books in our book swap at the OXO Tower Courtyard Wharf, Southbank.

See what we did in 2016

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The MINI living urban cabin

The MINI living urban cabin.

The MINI LIVING story continued on from 2016’s outstanding success with 2017’s Urban Cabin. It was designed with modern city living in mind. The concept demonstrated how to maximise your living space on a small urban footprint. At the centre of our Urban Cabin installation was the kitchen. The heart of any home and the most shared room at any party. The Urban Cabin’s kitchen referred to the importance of London’s food markets and brought visitors together to celebrate some of urban life’s most important elements.

MINI partner with urban masters

MINI partner with urban masters.

We partnered with Sam Jacob Studio to bring the MINI LIVING Urban Cabin to London’s Southbank. The award-winning practice was commissioned by MINI LIVING to build two modules which represent London’s Character; a shared kitchen, symbolising the importance of food markets in modern culture, and a micro-library where visitors were encouraged to share books in a city where the number of public libraries are falling every year.

Sam Jacob Studio’s contribution to this project drew upon his expertise in using design to build relationships to make it a place of exchange and bring people together.

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The MINI Living book swap - Take a piece of London literature home

The MINI Living book swap - Take a piece of London literature home.

We invited city dwellers to discover London’s greatest literature at our Urban Cabin, complete with its own working micro-library. In a bid to resurrect the library as a space to learn, borrow and meet people, we brought a mixture of modern design books and timeless classics reflecting the past 400 years of London life to fill the space’s library. And after the installation had run its course, all the books were given a new lease of life in charity shops, colleges and public libraries across the city.

A New Chapter for the Urban Cabin

A New Chapter for the Urban Cabin.

The London MINI Living Urban Cabin was always designed to live on and be used to inspire as many people as possible. So after 2017’s London Design Festival, we donated it to Global Generation, an educational charity that helps people create healthy, integrated and environmentally responsible communities. Working with architect David Eland and with the addition of two shipping containers, the new space at the Printworks in Canada Water creates the ideal environment to hold workshops about all sorts of things – from cooking home grown veg to creative writing. We couldn’t have asked for a better legacy if we tried.

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The Urban Cabin Story Continues

The Urban Cabin Story Continues.

The MINI LIVING design team aims to inspire us to use space more creatively in cities all around the world – not just in London. So MINI LIVING partnered with New York architects Bureau V to bring the Urban Cabin to life in the Big Apple. Installed within the unique creative environment of A/D/O, a 23,000 square-foot co-working space in Brooklyn, the new Urban Cabin addressed the question of what ‘home’ means in one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities; resulting in a space designed to give comfort and respite to the urban citizen – with a humorous edge.

See What We Did