Happy new year and welcome to our first post of 2022! I apologize for the delay in new postings, but since getting off the Trail my wife and I moved to a new city, which is always stressful and takes priority from hobbies like running this blog. Since I’ve been thinking a lot about living spaces lately, I thought it would be a great time to share a great nugget I uncovered while doing some recent research.
Say what you will about the Prequels, but I always thought despite being slaves, Anakin and Shmi’s home in Mos Espa seemed downright cozy (it’s probably all the low ceilings, rounded corners, and warm, creamy colors – cob-style architecture for the win!). But can we know how big it really was?
Thankfully, while digging around the Episode I Insider’s Guide (which doesn’t play well with modern Windows, BTW; a virtual PC is needed), I came across an architectural plan of their hovel. It was nice to be able to better visualize where the scenes take place, but best of all, it included a scale!:
With a little sixth-grade maths, we can easily calculate the areas of the various rooms to tell us the overall square footage, and see how this compares to real-life living spaces!
If you remember, we find the area of a rectangular shape by multiplying its length and width:
Anakin’s bedroom: 9×16= 144 square feet
Shmi’s bedroom (unseen onscreen—hence not part of the production plan—but included in Jenssen’s cutaway): 8×10 = 80 sq ft
hallway 8×10=80 sq ft
kitchen: 14×19=266 sq ft
foyer: 7×3.5=24.5 sq ft
Add these up and we get 594.5 square feet!
This actually works out to be a bit bigger than the average Manhattan studio apartment, but more than twice the size of some ‘micro-apartments’ out there, which can be as small as 265 square feet! Imagine: living in New York City and knowing you have less living space than a couple of space slaves!
Which Star Wars location would You want to live in? Let me know in a comment below, and we’ll see you next week!
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(Alternately, you can support my work via ko-fi as well.)
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 
Don’t forget that Shmi had to sleep somewhere, presumably that undrawn room in the southwest of the map. This should add at least another 150 sqft, unless she took a smaller room to sacrifice the more comfortable room for her son.
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Ah, of course! I didn’t think to cross-reference the schematic with the cutaway as I was measuring…I’ll have to update my calculations.
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Glad to assist! The cutaway diagram shows a sealed exterior doorway between the kitchen and Shmi’s room, stating that this was once three separate hovels. Those original hovels definitely fit into the tiny home size!
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Do an analysis on Padme’s apartment as it changes from TCW, Ep II and III
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