LittleDiggs

NEXT GENERATION HOUSE

Kumakura, Japan
172 sq ft
Sou Fujimoto, Architect

Next Generation House created by Sou Fujimoto Architects is a small housing module for weekend use, located on the edge of a forest overlooking the River Kuma at Kumakura, opposite the temple of Shibatatehime.

The oblique glass windowpanes are held in place with plastic plugs. The mobile sheets are in transparent acrylic. The small pavilion, a 4×4 meters cube, is made by assembling solid Japanese cedar blocks kept in place by their own weight and connecting metal cables running through vertical drill holes.

+ CubeMe

TRANSFORMER APARTMENT

Hong Kong
344 sq ft
Residence/Architect: Gary Chang

Hong Kong architect and technophile Gary Chang has the most amazing apartment. His 344-square-foot space can be shifted into at least 24 different layouts, using a funhouse’s worth of sliding walls and detachable shelving.

using shifting wall units suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling, the apartment becomes all manner of spaces — kitchen, library, laundry room, dressing room, a lounge with a hammock, an enclosed dining area and a wet bar.” (nytimes.com)

Chang has lived in this apartment since he was 14, moving in with his parents and three younger sisters. Back then, he used to sleep in the hallway. Now, he uses a hydraulic Murphy bed that he designed himself, which is usually hidden behind a sofa during the day.

Turning his apartment into what he’s named a “Domestic Transformer” hasn’t been cheap. It only cost $45,000 to buy, but his latest design efforts came with a $218,000 price tag.

Still, his experiment in small living is incredibly cool. Personally, if I had a quarter grand to play with, I’d much rather spend it optimizing something creatively rather than on another boring McMansion. [NYtimes]

+ New York Times

Friggebod Fun: The Mini House by Jonas Wagell

Architect:  Jonas Wagell
Sweden
161 sq. ft. (15 m2)

Friggebods are small swedish cottages; they don't need building permits for less than 150 square feet. This design by Jonas Wagell is available for purchase for 12,200 euros plus freight, with a solar power module for only 1,400 euros. A bath and kitchen module is also available.

Dezeen writes: " When designing the Mini house concept Jonas Wagell put a lot of emphasis on creating a house that is not built as traditional timber houses, since that would create a sort of error in scale. Friggebod-sheds often appear shrinked, like miniature houses, drained in details and odd proportions, since they are constructed with the same components as large houses."

+ Jonas Wagell
+ Prefab Cosm
+ TreeHugger
+ Dezeen

HOLLYWOOD SWANK

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 >

+ Metropolatin Home

BOX HOUSE ELEGANCE

Architects: Alan Chu & Cristiano Kato
Location: Ilhabela, Sao Paulo, Brazil 
Project year: 2008
Constructed area: 36 sqm, 118 sq ft
Photographs: Djan Chu



The building has 2 floors, a white suspended box, where the bedroom is and it is possible to see the continent and the São Sebastião Channel. Under it, at street level, are the living room, kitchen and bathroom.

The wood used on some doors and windows, staircase, shelves and furniture are leftovers of material used to make scaffoldings and molds for the white box reinforced concrete structure.

The 3.00 m x 5.00 m white box is supported on one side by an existing retaining wall and on the other by a wall built with stones, a characteristic of local constructions.

This movement shapes the other 3 spaces of the construction, the access yard, between the box and the retaining wall that curves following the parking lot ramp’s floor, the courtyard, between the box and the rock and the void created under the box, where the living room is.

 

+ NOTCOT.ORG

+ ARCHDAILY

SMALL SPACE—BIG STORAGE

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.

+ Metropolitan Home

Small Cabin For The Masses

In the words of the folks over at SmallSpaceLiving:

Designed by Vandeventer + Carlander Architects, the C3 was originally designed as a weekend retreat for a couple in Washington State. In 2006 it won the AIA/Sunset Magazine Merit award. The plans were later made available at a cost of $2,000.

Making plans available for mass production is a significant step for an architectural firm. Selling plans for structures carries with it considerable liabilities and expense, which are passed along in the purchase price.

So why am I talking about a several year old design? For several reasons, not the least of which is a price drop of the plans to $850. This is a fantastic price for an award winning design.

The cabin is a perfect illustration of small space living with big style. The foot print of the cabin results in an interior square footage of 352 on the fist floor with an additional 128 in the loft. The interior is designed with the kitchen and bath on the first caped by the sleeping loft.

The design of the cottage encompassed three primary goals. First, to provide the space required for an extend stay cabin with a minimal footprint. Second, provide a quality of space and abundant natural light not typically found in a structure of this size. And third, the structure needed to allow for simplicity of construction and maintenance. The C3 hits a home run all three points.

The cabins exterior is constructed of low cost fiber cement and metal panels. These materials have a low initial cost and minimal long-term maintenance.

The cabin has that light airy look and feel of a well-designed space. The natural light and interior height trick one into believing the C3 is a far more spacious structure.

+ SmallSpaceLiving
+ Vandeventer + Carlander Architects

EXTRA SMALL WITH A POINT OF VIEW

Design Team: Aljosa Dekleva, Tina Gregoric
Location: Krakovo, centre of Ljubljana
Size: 462 sq ft (43m2)

Located in Krakovo, the very centre of Ljubljana and at the same time in a historical village - once (in the Middle Ages) supplying the nearby monastery with fresh food - today highly protected historical area. The basic dimensions of the new house were already defined by law according to the volume of the pre-existing house.

+ Big Blog

HOW ABOUT A WINE CELLAR FOR ALL OF YOU WINE LOVERS WHO ARE SPACE STARVED

For those of you who crave a wine cellar or a wine fridge and live in small spaces and are space starved; think vertically downward. If you've got vertical space to play with, basement or lower level space, this wine cellar concept might be the answer. What else might this design inspire; a pathway to bathroom, playroom, study room, guest room, storage room, the list goes on.

+ Dornob

SPACES THAT PLAY DOUBLE DUTY

Aight, for those of you in small studio spaces, here are some stupendous examples maximizing living space when you're space challenged. When you are living in a 395-square-foot apartment, conserving space is an issue (above). Adeptly using a shelving system as a room divider, this homeowner, Alison Brungart, creates a continuous feel by aligning the unit with the living room wall. To really take advantage of the interplay between the two rooms, the TV rotates so it can be seen from either the bed or couch. Alison has chosen to use a light color for all the woodwork in her apartment, including the shelving system, to give a feeling of consistency. Even though the unit is open and airy, Alison has really achieved a distinctly separate feel between the two rooms in a way that also is useful for storage.

Renters David and Im could have opted for a larger space, but in the name of great natural light and saving money they cut back to a 426-square-foot loft. To max out every inch of space, they realized that their greatest asset was the incredibly high ceilings. To accommodate all their personal belongings, they decided to build a massive custom-designed storage wall. Tracking down all the materials to complete the storage system was a feat by itself. The couple had to contact specialty lumberyards for pieces (like the 6x10 planks of wood for shelves), and even sourced local sailboat shops to find items specifically designed for small spaces. (below)


Gideon and Tracy’s home is a 530-square-foot studio that draws inspiration from the design of a pocket knife whose blade opens and retracts. The wall in the middle of the space serves as the blade, invented by the couple to be completely rotatable by resting on a very large gate hinge. Depending on their mood, or if they have company, the wall can be moved to separate the bedroom from the dining and living space.(below)

Rotated here to enlarge the bedroom, the television compartment is visible. Depending on which way the wall is facing, the television can be viewed from either bedroom or living room. Made out of corrugate polycarbonate, plywood and MDF, this versatile wall is a brilliant construction but no easy feat. When assembling the pocket knife, Gideon and Tracy recall, “We could not get the wall through the front door so we had to winch it up from the roof and through the windows in two pieces.”

When James and Margaret bought their 565-square-foot studio apartment, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Both architects by profession, they sketched a new floorplan and gutted half the space. There were two key components which factored heavily into the couple’s redesign which were first, the desire for a sense of openness and second, the ability to let natural light into every room of the apartment from a single light source. The most fundamental new-and-improved feature to their apartment is a wood wall they designed that strongly sections the space and serves as a strong visual design element. The bench in the dining area was artfully planned to be a part of the multi-purpose wall, containing storage space that extends through the interior of the bench and into the bedroom.(below

+ Point Click Home