Across Europe, the one-room flat is still named for bachelors
In Vienna, Prague, Bucharest and Athens, a one-room flat goes by a version of the French word garçonnière, a young man's lodging. Poles call it a kawalerka, from their word for bachelor, and Canadians simply say a bachelor. The studio apartment has an oddly gendered vocabulary for a home that now suits almost anyone.
A studio merges living room, bedroom and usually kitchen into a single space, often with its own small bathroom. That differs from a British bedsit or an American single-room-occupancy unit, which typically lack a private kitchen or bathroom and share facilities along the hall. Residents trade space for privacy: a studio costs far less than a larger home, yet avoids the compromises of living with a flatmate. Traditionally rented, studios are increasingly sold outright as rising prices push buyers towards smaller homes.
Naming conventions reveal how countries count rooms. In Portugal a studio is a T0, meaning zero separate bedrooms. Norway, Sweden and Finland call it a one-room flat, so their one-bedroom homes are advertised as two rooms. Brazil borrowed kitchenette to make quitinete, Argentina says monoambiente, Kenyans say bed-sitter, and in Austria the garçonnière was the standard workers' home in the tenements of 19th-century industrialisation, many of which still share bathrooms on each floor.
Sizes vary enormously. Australian and Austrian studios usually run from 20 to 40 square metres. In Hong Kong, a flat of around 10 square metres, with a living area barely the size of a parking space, can cost up to US$20,000. Taiwanese studios often skip the kitchen altogether, since eating out is normally cheaper than cooking, though most keep a fridge. Singapore built public studio flats specifically for residents aged 55 and over.
Demand is growing as households shrink. In Finland, one-person households nearly tripled between 1970 and 2020, from 15.7% to 45.3% of the total, and in the city of Turku 55% of new homes are studios smaller than 37 square metres.
Source: Studio apartment
