This Tiny $8K Prefab Stretches Open for When You Need a Little More Room

Rooftop parties are common in Quito, Ecuador, with friends throwing barbecues on top of apartment towers, and bars serving from terraces that take advantage of beautiful mountain views surrounding the city. Earlier this year, Juan Ruiz and Amelia Tapia hosted a set of al fresco parties at their building, with DJs spinning neu beats to a small crowd of around 20 people. The headliner? A collapsible prefab structure that served as the DJ booth, designed and built by the architect couple.

The prefab, called Iwi, is meant as more than just a venue—it’s for anyone looking to add a flexible space to their property. With a timber frame clad in cork and waterproof canvas stitched into wood ribbing, it expands like an accordion to a total of roughly 92 square feet. When compressed, it becomes a 26-square-foot roofed hutch.

"It can be either fully compressed, or half open, or fully open," says the Spanish-born Ruiz, who’s been in Ecuador on and off for around a decade. "And you get back all the space here that you would otherwise lose," adds Tapia, an Ecuador native.