All Photos By Gail

The A to Z Living Unit (1993) designed by Andrea Zittel (B. 1965) is fabricated from Steel and Wood, and is shown here with the following accessories:

Two mirrors, four hangers, sweater, towel, soap container, calendar, filing cabinet, pencils, two notepads, folding seat, folding bed, four glass jars, two ceramic cups, two glasses, two ceramic bowls, digital clock, electric lightning system, hot plate, pot, and toaster oven.

The Living Unit is a modular, portable living environment that includes a place to sleep, a modest kitchen, and storage — the essentials of daily life.  Inspired by the limitations of her own 200-square-foot Brooklyn studio, Zittel began work on a series of functional living units that could be customized to meet individual needs and shape behavior according to different ideals.

Interested in what she describes as the “fine line between freedom and control, and how people often feel liberated by parameters,” Zittel’s living units can be viewed as simultaneously constraining in their austerity, and freeing in their utopian rejection of materialism.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.