Small Footprint Documentary Series

By 2050, seven in ten people will live in a city. Will they be happy?

Cities. Overcrowded concrete jungles, damaging to us and to our planet. By 2050, seven in ten people will live in a city, but will they be happy? Innovators, architects, urban planners, and designers believe they can be. They see urban life as an asset, a chance for community and wellbeing driven by smart design.

At the forefront, in Australia, architects Nicholas Gurney and Brad Swartz are rewriting the rules for an ideal home by repurposing existing small homes and apartments. Planners and academics Rob Adams and Jefa Greenaway fight to change the face of our cities for the better. All in support of a unique idea, that our cities can be the happiest, healthiest places on earth.

Across six 10-minute episodes, we will explore the philosophies and meet the thinkers, planners, and designers that are shaping the future of our cities.

Small Footprint

Episodes

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01

Designing Happier Living

Small Footprint living has more advantages than most think. In episode one of this new series Colin steps out of his own 37sqm/290sqft apartment to meet the architects and city planners resisting urban sprawl.

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Reimagining Small Living

In our cities, small footprint living is associated with tightly packed, dark homes. But they don't need to be that way.

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Building Urban Villages

Across the world, the design of our city homes has been increasingly shaped by an investor first market. Melbourne is facing some of the highest housing prices in the world and local developers Nightingale Housing & Hip V Hype are creating alternative models for home building that are more sustainable and livable.

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Rethinking Affordability

Small footprint design presents an opportunity to radically change our approach to affordable housing. Not only on the scale of individual apartments but also in the planning of our city blocks and existing buildings.

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Greening our Cities

How do we use small footprint thinking to better connect ourselves with nature and culture? This connection helps us live happier, healthier lives, but as Rob Adams shares in Melbourne’s Southbank suburb, better planning is often set aside in the name of maximising building space.

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Building Happier Cities

COVID-19 has highlighted some of the biggest problems with the way we design our homes and the cities around them. But it’s also given us a chance to reset, reflect on, and amplify what is good about them.

Small Footprint

Stories

Small Footprint

Introducing our new series: Small Footprint

Small footprint living and design has been an obsession for us ever since we started making Never Too Small in 2017.

Small Footprint

Designing affordable cities

Housing affordability is a challenge reaching crisis point here in Melbourne and in many cities around the world.

Small Footprint

Got Stuff? Clever Storage for Small Homes

These NTS homes take clever storage to new heights by getting creative to make the most of their small footprints.