Size: 270-370 sq ft
Location: NYC
Architects: nARCHITECTS
The city on Tuesday unveiled the winner of a competition to design and build an apartment tower on city-owned land composed entirely of micro-units, 55 homes the size of hotel rooms that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hopes will be the first in a wave of tiny apartments aimed at addressing the city’s shortage of studio and one-bedroom apartments.
Read more... NYTimes
Location: Coromandel Peninsula
Size: 430 sq ft, 40 sq meters
Architect: Crosson Clarke Carnacha
On the shore of an idyllic white sanded beach in New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula rests an elegant hut. Closed up, the rough macrocarpa-cladding blends into the landscape and perches quietly on the dunes, as passersby wonder how it could possibly function for a family of five.
Designed to close up against the elements, the hut measures a mere 40 square metres and rests on two thick wooden sleds that allow it to be shifted around the beach front section. This innovative portability is a response to the ever changing landscape that line the beachfront in this coastal erosion zone.
Within the hut, the ingenuity reveals itself further as no nook or cranny is overlooked. Every available space has been utilised, right down to the secret individual cubby holes hidden in the children's bunk room.
For these clients it was all about the real essence of the hut; small, simple and functional. The hut comes to life when the enormous shutter on the northeast facade winches open to form an awning, revealing two-storey high steel-framed glass doors that form the main entrance. The hut then transforms into a sun drenched haven, opening up to the views of the surf and the distant Mercury Islands.
The mezzanine bedroom is accessed by climbing a wall-mounted ladder through a closeable hatch, it shares the same view as downstairs through the huge glass doors. Climb the ladder again and you arrive on a roof terrace which catches rainwater for the gravity tanks behind.
From the industrial style fittings to the quirky furnishings, this whole structure plays with the idea of the most egalitarian of Kiwi recreations and embraces and challenges the image of the traditional âKiwi bachâ. Small, simply and elegantly self-contained, this tiny elegant hut strips holiday living right back to basics.
+ Notcot
Location: West Los Angles
Size: 483 sq ft
Architects: Architecture8
This studio is high on style and function in a beautiful period building; has preserved period details, separate updated kitchen and breakfast nook, a walk-in closet/dressing area, a renovated bathroom with a claw foot bathtub and updated systems. Other notable details include high ceilings, functional Murphy bed, hardwood flooring, mahogany doors and woodwork, ample cabinet and storage space, an abundance of natural light. See video and pics below.
1. Walk-in-closet and storage room
2. Murphy Bed
3. Living area (Liking the ceilings)
4. Eat-in Kitchen
5. Bathroom (see above video for bathroom pic)
6. Floorplan
7 Period building: Glen Donald Building
Place: Tel Aviv
Architect: SFARO
Size: 430 sq ft
This is another excellent example of the use of a 'cube' as a solution for maximizing space, utility, functionality, and design.
Following Tel-Aviv’s soaring housing prices over the last 3 years, many people were forced to renovate their existing apartments instead of selling and buying bigger ones.
This owner decided to transform her studio apartment into a 1 bedroom, including storage units, a large separate kitchen and a full size queen bedroom.
As a design solution, we chose to condense all the programmatic functions and storage units into a cube which was centered in the middle of the space, thus dividing the apartments into 4 zones, while maintaining a 360 degree circulation around it, which makes the space seem endless and bigger than it actually is.
By adding sliding doors that disappear into the cube, the space can be altered according to the time of day and the various needs of the owner, contributing further more to the sense of a multi-functional and multi-layered space.
Where: Bordeaux, France
Size: 441 sq ft
Owner: Jérémie Buchholtz
Architect: Fabre/deMarien
Location, scarcity, affordability, and necessity drove Jérémie Buchholtz to look for a less obvious and unconventional home.
Jérémie Buchholtz , a freelance photographer, converted a dilapidated garage in Bordeaux into a studio apartment at a cost of 140,000 euros ($187,362). The new double-glazed glass portion of the facade is hidden behind a honey-colored pine door which slides shut to cover the facade and keep out prying eyes.
When the outside pine door slides open, the interior patio — with its teak decking, open-air roof and white garden furniture from the French furniture outlet Fly — is revealed along with double-glazed glass sliding doors that lead into the living area.
Despite the fact that the garage was priced at 80,000 euros ($107,000) — less than half the price of a similarly sized home in Bordeaux — it was still a rundown storage space, full of junk behind huge metal doors. Mr. Buchholtz, though, saw potential. The nondescript place, now a designer bachelor’s pad, is tucked away on a lane lined by converted 18th-century stables that house a burgeoning community of artists and young families.
This area includes a white Formica and chrome Ikea kitchen and a dining area with a glass-topped table.
Mr. de Marien designed a “house within a house,” a gleaming cube-shaped construction of Douglas pine that dominates the far end of the living area. “By combining all the factors of living in this self-contained cube — such as sleeping, washing, working and storing — we kept all of the necessities of Jérémie’s life in one place,” the architect said. “By building upwards towards the roof and internally into the heart of the cube, we had no need to spread these aspects throughout the living area.”
The Douglas pine cube, built at a cost of 9,389.50 euros ($12,565), contains and conceals the sleeping area, bathroom, laundry, dressing room, and storage space. Mr. Buchholtz works at a small office space on one side of the cube. The wheat-colored sofa bed in natural organic cotton, as with everything in the cube, was made to Mr. Buchholtz’s specifications.
+ Article by Nick James of NYTIMES
+ Photography by Valerio Mezzanotti for NYTIMES
Size: 400 sq. ft.
Location: East Village, New York City
Architect: Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture
Storage, restraint, and efficiency were key in carving this bachelor’s studio in the East Village into a live-work sculpture for a grown-up.
Living and working in just under 500 square feet, Michael Pozner, Head of Retail Development for American Apparel (which is based in LA), had been pushing the limits of what his apartment, in its current configuration, would accommodate. He’d purchased the studio back in 1999, before the boom of the last decade, and wasn’t anxious to move. But between his office needs and his many toys and quirky art pieces, the apartment was jam-packed and nothing had a place.
The solution was ultimately about exploiting every opportunity for storage, and then combining those spaces and the kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping loft into an intricately sculpted wood-paneled central service core. The space outside of the core area would remain as flexible as possible, and all surfaces and cabinetry would be finished in a high-gloss white to emphasize their adaptability.
The before shot.
Michael is always working on several projects at once. To accommodate his reliance on “visual filing” methods which had overtaken his floor, JPDA designed a desk with multiple desktops- sliding trays on which documents can remain spread out, but slide out of the way when switching between projects, or when it’s time to entertain.
The apartment was previously a plain sheetrock box with objects added into it, the new built-in millwork reads as a wall which has been subtracted from, in order to create space for the TV, desk and credenza.
White Oak planks wrap the service core of the apartment, including the kitchen, bathroom, closets, and sleeping loft. The resulting sculptural volume appears to have been dropped into an otherwise clean white box, creating a focal object and organizing the space into public and private areas.
Building the bed platform as part of the loft structure allowed for a full-height walk-in closet below.
A roller shade lowers to separate the sleeping loft from the living space.
Every opportunity for storage was exploited, including drawers built into the stair risers, cabinets that go to the ceiling, and a new walk-in closet under the sleeping loft.
The kitchen cabinet doors continue the wood plank walls around the corner to give the sense that the space is carved from a heavy wooden mass.
The standard toilet was replaced with a compact wall mounted unit to create more floor area. Matte black powder coated lav and shower fixtures, were special ordered as the finish was not yet available in the US.
The walls are tiled in a narrow Italian porcelain brick mosaic that reads like a natural stone.
Storage areas became the driver for the design, influencing the forms within the space.
All of the private functions of the apartment - cooking, cleaning, dressing, sleeping - are contained within the sculptural wooden volume.
+ Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture
+ Thanks to Chris Gsell for throwing this my way
Architects: Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
Location: Mazama, Washington, USA
Lead Architect: Tom Kundig, FAIA
Date of Completion: 2008
Size: 440 sf/per hut (200 sf interior space, 240 sf exterior deck)
Photographs: Chad Kirkpatrick & /Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
"Responding to the owner’s need for space to house visiting friends and family, the Rolling Huts are several steps above camping, while remaining low-tech and low-impact in their design. The huts sit lightly on the site, a flood plain meadow in an alpine river valley. The owner purchased the site, formerly a RV campground, with the aim of allowing the landscape return to its natural state. The wheels lift the structures above the meadow, providing an unobstructed view into nature and the prospect of the surrounding mountains." Read more >>
Modular furniture allows for multiple seating variations. Though it's not shown here, I can imagine piecing the furniture together, forming another sleeping platform, with foam pad stowed away within the larger cube.
Clayton, Missouri
408 sq. ft.
Residence of Anu Suebsawangkul
When Anu Suebsawangkul painted her 408-square-foot apartment all white she had no idea that her quick fix to conceal hideous blue walls would be the start of a design obsession. After that it was all white all the time: painting white furniture, purchasing white accessories, and fabricating white curtains. Soon, however, the monochromatic room wasn’t enough and, says Suebsawangkul, “I decided to give my room some pizzazz. I discovered the Hollywood Regency style and I fell in love with it. Kelly Wearstler and Dorothy Draper are my style icons.” Metropolitan Home home is a winner thanks to Suebsawangkul’s smart black-and-white design decisions: It’s chic, elegant and glamorous. Best of all, it didn’t break the bank. Read full article >
New York City
400 sq feet
Residence: Luca Andrisan
Storage in general is something of a premium in New York City but for Luca Andrisani, storage evokes something closer to liberation, "I like the freedom of putting things away and hiding them," the Italian-born architect says. Particularly, perhaps, when your apartment is just 400 square feet. His apartment provides several lessons in space-saving ingenuity.
Andrisani had the benefit of exposed brick walls and generous 11-foot ceilings. But first there was some cleaning-up to do. The loft bed was taken out, the kitchen and bathroom gutted and the oak floors refinished. Meanwhile, a Sheetrock divider separating the living and sleeping areas was replaced with a new double-sided storage wall -- a sleek, white-lacquered assemblage of folding and pocket doors. Now the home's centerpiece, it cleverly conceals a rotating flat-screen television between two sets of those doors; one opens to the bedroom, the other to the living room on the other side.
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