What is the future of city living? MINI LIVING is about extending the expertise of MINI design into the urban realm to create initiatives that explore new ways of living, working and interacting with the modern city environment. For this year’s London Design Festival, MINI LIVING has created URBAN CABIN, an ultra-compact installation that demonstrates the power of multifunctional design when space is at a premium. A collaboration between MINI and architect Sam Jacob Studio, the cabin is installed in the OXO Tower Wharf Courtyard. Jacob was a co-founder of the now-defunct FAT Architects and shares MINI’s philosophy of playful efficiency. As an acclaimed designer, educator and polemicist, his projects, such as a hairdressing salon with integral art gallery, demonstrate a fascination with mixed-up typologies as well as a belief in using design to create both meaning and place.
URBAN CABIN is a creative new take on communal space, combining both work and pleasure functions. Shaped in the MINI LIVING studio, this compact, 15 sq m modular space comprises of two mirrored and copper mesh structures. Intended to evoke London’s fluid, frantic but always essential relationship with culture and creativity, each URBAN CABIN is divided into a shared kitchen and an experience room. In London, Jacob’s experience room is a micro-library, a space that highlights how many precious city resources, such as the traditional library, are now under threat.
Jacob describes the space as ‘emulating London's stacked skyline’, both in terms of form and content. MINI LIVING’s creative lead, Oke Hauser, hopes the library will kindle debates and connections. The reading list – including a Wallpaper* sanctioned set of titles – contains books old and new that have been chosen to evoke the spirit of London life through the centuries. The book swap is a literal application of the sharing economy, a catalyst for positive change that helps to connect, inspire and engage through shared stories and histories.
URBAN CABIN’s micro-house scale also addresses that other great capital absence, space. URBAN CABIN’s shared kitchen is a social hub, reflecting the fact that making and sharing food continues to be an integral element of London life. An expanding table and louvered walls allow the space to grow outwards or contract inwards depending on demand.
MINI’s spiritual origins are in the creation of the world’s original compact city car. MINI LIVING takes that heritage to another level, exploring the social, architectural and cultural role of the spaces inside and outside our cars, and how design can improve these for the better. By combining the company’s design skills with collaborators from every creative field, MINI LIVING explores new ways to work, live, and play in the city. Cities are about connections, and URBAN CABIN infuses the marque’s spirit of fun, adventure and innovation into a place for coming together; a space in which to eat, socialise, learn and share our experiences.
The kitchen, left, features a table that extends the dining area out into the public realm for shared meals and more
A micro-library offers insights in London, past, present and future, to read, share and discuss. The slatted wall of the living space allows the room to be opened or closed to the street
With slats closed, the copper-clad URBAN CABIN becomes an inscrutable object in the cityscape, the copper skin reflecting and distorting its surroundings
The kitchen is compact and perfectly planned. The terrazo table doubles as a work surface and the adjustable shelving give the space an ad-hoc, flexible feel, despite its scale
From left to right, architect Sam Jacob, MINI LIVING experience designer Corinna Natter, MINI LIVING creative lead Oke Hauser, MINI head of brand strategy and business innovation Esther Bahne
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the MINI LIVING
-
The story behind a one-of-a-kind Dieter Rams handbag, reborn by German leather brand TsatsasA new exhibition at Vitsœ’s London store celebrates the ‘931’ bag, designed by Dieter Rams for his wife Ingeborg in 1963 and reborn over half a century later in a collaboration between Rams and German leather accessories brand Tsatsas
-
A Miami pied-à-terre channels Art Deco glamour and endless summerInterior designer Olga Malyev reimagines a South of Fifth apartment with bold colour, vintage treasures and a sunlit spirit that captures Miami’s timeless allure
-
A travelling exhibition of chairs hits the road for London Design Festival 2025Organised by Design Everything, ‘A Seat at the Table’ travels to different venues in the city, where the chairs support communal events
-
The new 2025 London Open House Festival tours to book if you love homes2025 London Open House launches this weekend, running 13-21 September; here, we celebrate the newcomers in the residential realm, flagging the exciting additions to the festival's growing home tour programme
-
The wait is over – the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist is hereThe restored home of Big Ben, creative housing for different needs, and a centre for medical innovation – the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist has just been announced, and its six entries are as diverse as they can be
-
Slides, clouds and a box of presents: it’s the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s quirky new pavilionAt the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, ArtPlay Pavilion by Carmody Groarke and a rich Sculpture Garden open, fusing culture and fun for young audiences
-
Bay House brings restrained modern forms and low-energy design to the Devon coastA house with heart, McLean Quinlan’s Bay House is a sizeable seaside property that works with the landscape to mitigate impact and maximise views of the sea
-
A whopping 92% of this slick London office fit-out came from reused materialsCould PLP Architecture's new workspace provide a new model for circularity?
-
The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s houses of the monthWallpaper* has spotlighted an array of remarkable architecture in the past month – from a pink desert home to structures that appears to float above the ground. These are the houses and buildings that most captured our attention in August 2025
-
Meet the landscape studio reviving the eco-brutalist Barbican ConservatoryLondon-based Harris Bugg Studio is working on refreshing the Barbican Conservatory as part of the brutalist icon's ongoing renewal; we meet the landscape designers to find out more
-
A refreshed Victorian home in London is soft, elegant and primed for hostingSobremesa house by architects Studio McW shows off its renovation and extension, designed for entertaining
