A house for one hundred euros a month? Van Bo Le-Mentzel, winner of the 2018 Non Sprecare Award in the personalities category, invented it (photo).

VAN BO LE-MENTZEL TINY HOUSE

In the splendid setting ofChurch Hall of the Luiss in Rome was held on Don't Waste Award 2018, which, like every year, has seen the participation of projects, ideas, energy, synergies, and innovation. In addition, of course, to the many protagonists whose commitment, daily work, and insights have enabled us to tell stories of non-waste. Of reuse, recycling, attention, and sensitivity. Thou shalt not waste, the eleventh commandment, however you interpret it.

And so the concept of non-waste becomes a pretext for talking about wasted lives, new opportunities, redemptions, and dreams coming true. This is the case of the non-profit organization Semi di Libertà, which is dedicated to offering a second chance to those who have thrown their lives away, by choice or unfortunate coincidence, like the inmates of Rebibbia prison, and does so through work in a brewery.
Or the prevention of wasteful use of essential environmental resources like seawater, with the wonderful Marevivo project, or the drug recovery project Farmaco Amico, which embodies the values ​​of solidarity and subsidiarity by donating tons of medicines to non-profit organizations or people experiencing social hardship.

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DON'T WASTE AWARD 2018

But that's not all. Guests at the Non Sprecare Award included the Florentines behind the Recyclize app-game, which teaches adults and children how to properly separate waste through the principle of fun, known as gamification, as well as high-profile guests like Franca Leosini, winner of the Best Italian Personality award, and the architect Van Bo Le Mentzel, winner of the award for Best Foreign Personality.

The video features an interview conducted by Asvis Italia in which Antonio Galdo, director of Non sprecare, explains the project: 

VAN BO LE-MENTZEL WINNER OF THE FOREIGN CHARACTER CATEGORY

Architect Van Bo Le-Mentzel, a German of Laotian origins, illustrated his beautiful concept of space-saving, a democratic utopia that arises not only as an architectural concept, but as a complete rethinking of the relationship between space and people and, in a broader, anthropological sense, of how inhabitants can enjoy increasingly larger, yet at the same time atomized and atomizing, cities.

A visionary, Le Mentzel lived in the most underground Berlin, during its most incendiary years, having moved from Laos with his parents during the Vietnam War. In many interviews, he talks about how that experience as an "exile" led him to a rootless and almost identity-less childhood, yet at the same time allowed him to grow up unconstrained, free of too many cultural archetypes. This gifted him immense creativity and the freedom to radically and unfilteredly rethink his surroundings.

Thus began little Van's interest in art. But not academic art, but the more primitive and instinctive kind of graffiti, the street art that couldn't be confined to galleries.
And, indeed, if we were to look for keywords to describe Le Mentzel's work and achievements up to now, we could and should do so in the semantic field of extreme freedom of thought and expression and a total rethinking of the normal concepts of democracy, artist, designer, space, and work.
Everything is geared towards extreme accessibility, and the designer is, first and foremost, a maker. Not only that, we can all be makers, because the Laotian architect's designs are characterized by being affordable to everyone, and within everyone's reach even in terms of the technical ability to realize them: from the first piece of furniture he designed after practical experience as a carpenter and joiner, Hartz-IV-Möbel, it is made specifically to be assembled, reproduced, and self-built by anyone.

This is, after all, the key concept underlying the studies and developments on tiny houses, not only in terms of minimizing outdoor space, but also as true co-housing experiences in extremely small spaces, even 6 square meters. Smaller than a parking lot.

VAN BO LE-MENTZEL PROJECTS

His most iconic project, the 100-Euro-Wohnung (literally, "100-Euro Apartment"), is a residential unit part of a communal living concept called Co-Being House. These micro-apartments are incredibly affordable, costing just 100 euros a month to rent. The prototype, mounted on a 6,4 m² trailer, includes a kitchen, bathroom, office, bedroom, and living room.

The affordable costs would allow everyone to live wherever they want, even in the city center, using otherwise unused spaces and without the need for multi-zero bank accounts.

The 100-euro apartment project is part of the broader Bauhaus Campus Berlin experiment, founded by Van Bo Le Mentzel himself in 2015. This is an example of collective living on a campus of mini-houses where "students" can study, build, and research new and more equitable forms of interaction and coexistence. The experiment is modeled after Walter Gropius's much more famous Bauhaus, a modern and thoroughly libertarian educational institution in the pre-Weimar Republic years. The same spirit of the original Bauhaus animates the temporary campus, currently inhabited by a diverse mix of people from a wide range of fields, especially design, culture, business, and science, as well as the startup community.
Considered the creator of the tiny philosophy, Van Bo and his 'karma-economy', the one in which everyone can give their small contribution to the improvement of the world and its power relations, also inspired the young Italian architect Leonardo Di Chiara.

(All images accompanying the text are taken from the Facebook page Tinyhouse University)

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