Ikea recently released their 2017 catalogue, which features a lot of furniture designed for the tiny micro-apartments thought to be the future of inner-city living.

The Swedish furniture giant predicts that millions more people will be living in micro apartments by 2020, and has tried to be helpful in depicting life in a much smaller space in its latest catalogue. However, Fast Company's CoDesign page has labelled the vision "terrifying."

"But even Ikea couldn't make living in a pallet-sized studio for half your salary look anything less than comically nightmarish, like outtakes left on the cutting-room floor from Woody Allen's Sleeper," write John Brownlee.

He takes umbrage with the catalogue's depiction of a table for one ("Because God knows you can't squeeze anything as tangible as a friend into the $4,000-a-month studio-cum-sarcophagus you rent") and their image of a dinner party gathered around a coffee table ("the company suggests eating your food off the floor like a dog..."), as well as their suggestion that children's bunk beds be stored in the living room ("Don't give your kids their own bedroom! Install a bunk bed in the living room instead!") 

Brownlee says "the jury is still out on whether micro apartments are going to be the utopian cure to cities' housing shortages...or just another step toward a crowded Earth dystopia where we're all packed together like pink, gill-less krill." 

What do you think of micro-apartments? Comment below

See also:

Hotel room sized homes

Housing of the future

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