The redesign was completed by architect Anthony Gill, and there are space-saving solutions applicable to any home. The main feature is the bookshelf that runs across the middle of the apartment. It serves as a room divider between the living room and the kitchen, and it adds storage and a counter to the latter. Another clever feature of the apartment is the parents' bed, which pulls out into the living space and stows away beneath their daughter's platform bed in her room. I suspect their clothing is stored in the closed portion over their bed.
Images: Peter Bennetts via Desire to Inspire
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Wow - and I thought my place was small at 1100 square feet for three of us! Cool ideas!
Very clever
I love it.
I love to see what others do with their spaces. As Momma Gigi said, I always feel like my 1018SF of space is small.
I want to see more photos!
It's impressive that the family's needs are met without making the space seem cramped.
wow, this place is amazing! my small family of 3 live in 600sq ft and this place looks huge compared to mine.. very inspiring!
The idea of using vertical space is simply brilliant! I also want to see more of this place.
Great ideas and love the vertical efficiency but jesus- if you can spend this much on interiors but are cramming 3 people into a broom closet you really need to rethink your priorities
@Displaced: everyone's priorities are different. Maybe the apartment is in a great location, close to work & good schools and they wouldn't be able to find/afford something else there? So instead buying a bigger house in a boring suburb and spending a lot of their free time communiting they chose to live in the city and enjoy their free time in their small but beautiful home with their daughter. Also, it is a lot better for the environement to live small& in the city instead of big & in the suburb. Some people consider living green and saving time to spend with their family a bigger priority than a big house.
This family may be meeting valid priorities and using its resources well. Saving is especially important now. A person may have enough for a one-time redesign but not enough to get and maintain a bigger home. Part of the redesign expense may in effect be reduced by its minimizing ongoing future expenses such as utilities and fuel. The family also may take the furnishings with them or sell them to the next occupant. Besides, I hear city people spend most of their waking hours out of their homes enjoying city life.
I think the place looks great, just wouldn't work for my family of 3. The parents' sleeping area has no privacy. I guess whatever works for them...Where do they store their clothe? I didn't see a closet.
Very clever and quite attractive. The only suggestion that I would make would be to downsize the books and magazines for more utilitarian space. A former bibliophile, I ditched anything that could be referenced online and only kept a few cherished (and often read) volumes. I haven't missed the others at all.
All very well but I think that cleveness isn't enough. You need privacy, and unless your kids are dolls, you need a quiet place to get away from games, screams and toys.
I weed my book collection in part by releasing as I finish any I don't want to reread, so most go fast. Even so, I had over twice as many as I do now. I decided, since my fiction collection titles were readily available, to list its titles by author before releasing it at one go. The list was in case I wanted to replace any particular title with a used bookstore paperback copy or public library loan. I never felt the desire to replace any of it, and the freed space is useful for current interests, so try this at home if you need to free some space.
My husband and I live in 380 sq.ft. in NYC. We too have mostly built-ins and a lot of our space is also used for books. Book people are book people, what can I say? (And yes, we've got lots of books on the kindle too.)
Personally, I find this kitchen academic and depressing - no warmth whatsoever. And that unfinished and very sharp edge to the kitchen counter is just plain wrong.
Hold on- are the bed and the kitchen on the same side of that divider?
Perhaps they are aware of the study that shows books in the home boost a child's education level--regardless of the education or literacy of their parents. This looks like a fairly culled and curated library to me. Perhaps it seems like a "display of intellect" if you find the act of reading particularly high-brow or intellectual, but it's also entertainment, and even social if your family is in the habit of reading aloud to each other (as mine is).
Having grown up with a wall of novels in my dad's office and in our living room, and being a voracious reader and re-reader, a home isn't a home without bookcases full of books that I love.
Anyway, this apartment looks very functional and cold to me, in spite of the books. The black in the kitchen is a surprising choice to me, since the space is so small and oppressive. But the use of space is impressive. Well done there.
I'd like to see how this works with a child older than a toddler/preschooler. My guess is "not". So yeah, a lot of money to spill out on something that's not a viable long term arrangement.
"Obvious display of intellect": maybe they can't yet find all the volumes on kindle?
Built ins are great for a small apartment. I love the color black and don't usually think it makes a room smaller but I do have to say that this kitchen is depressing.
Did y'all ever see Maxwell's home when it was featured on HGTV's "Small spaces, big style"? T.I.N.Y. This place would be a natural for that show.
I think the bed under a bed concept is brilliant.
Since books imply merely that a resident is literate, they no longer are "an obvious display of intellect." Besides, that's a modest number of books for three people. People who have specialized interests and hobbies may go to great effort to develop their nonfiction collections. If their books were expensive and hard to acquire, then they may choose to keep them despite their home's size. Also, some people prefer the traditional format to kindle.
Kudos to the small "dwellers" ... me .. 620 sq feet. I really like the book shelf divider.
I think that the bookcase / divider is a great use for the space. And, I love how they hide the adult's bed when not in use.
Having said that, I wouldn't want to live with a child in the space.
We've always lived in small spaces with our children, which made privacy for the us the parents even more paramount. The bed solution may be a clever use of space, but at minimum, I made sure that our beds were NEVER on a shared wall. I don't know how old their daughter is, but that simply won't be tenable beyond the age of three or four. They will be looking for larger digs after that, or they'll only ever have their "dalliances" in the shower for privacy's sake. *shrugs*
I never had kids but, from what I've seen, young parents often surrender their love lives, privacy, and quiet for years even in much larger homes.
koonark - I"ve looked at kindles, but I hate reading from a screen. I do it all day for work, and when I get home, I just want to cuddle up with a real book with real pages. Plus, I never buy books new; always at a thrift store which means that it doesn't matter if I leave one behind at a cabin, or a b and b. or if I drop it in the bathtub. And the rest I borrow from a library. You'd never see me with a kindle.
That said, I also have a well stocked bookshelf with particular books that are important to me. I love books in the same way that others love shoes. Nobody asks people to cull their shoes when they're weeding, but books seems to be a common 'cull'. why is it ok to have 16 pairs of shoes, but not ok to have more than one book case, if any bookcase at all.
have to say I agree with the folks that sya this won't be tenable in the long run. We had a bigger place than this (1100 sq. ft) but also two kids and both of us worked from home, and it was all good until the kids got bigger. By the time we moved (when kids were 7 and 4), we were on top of each other all the time. While it's easy to make fun of the burbs and look down on them disdainfully, there is wonder in knowing all your neighbours and in having a backyard that the kids can just go out an play in, all by themselves. I love seeing the kids race around making up worlds, and knowing that I can see them from inside without being so close as to influence their play. That's something that was never possible in our old place.
Burbs, in our town, however, are 15 minutes from the city centre, and I don't work in the downtown core and my husband works from home.
I reject the position that books detract from residential interior design. A home library can be valuable and help make a space a home. That said, space is money and a finite resource, and a library tends to outgrow its space and become outdated even when weeded regularly. Unless you're collecting rare or autographed books, it's their contents that matter, not owning a hard copy. Reading good books until they're part of you before passing them on for others to enjoy may be the best way to own them.
Very nice. But limited for older kids. Tangentially, I'd love to see small space solutions for families with older children of different genders. How do families with teen or pre-teen boys and girls make do?
Re. books as an "obvious display of intellect". Are you saying that a large home library makes you feel insecure about your own intellect? Should people minimize their libraries so that you and your ilk will feel less threatened?
I was wondering if that comment was meant sarcastically. Back when literacy and books were rare, books at home were impressive, but these days it's standard for a home to have a few bookcases.
I like the place overall, the sparseness, the clean lines. I generally prefer using the library over collecting books, but to each his or her own (I've got my fair share of yarn that is waiting for a project). And I really like the small space living for its own sake: less use of resources, more getting out into the community, less focus on owning things. Especially if it is an issue of city living, sacrificing space for access, etc. I wonder if they have a space to store bikes (like if you have a road bike for racing that you wouldn't lock up outside).
But most of all, I wonder: if you are going to build a floor-to-ceiling wall of shelves to create a separate room for your child, why not just build a wall? I can still see the purpose of the bed storage, which I like a lot... but maybe the bed could be pulled out entirely so that it is not against the other room's wall (for purposes of rockin' sex) and a thick cover or hinged flap could drop down to close out the wall from inside the child's room (I mean while the bed is in use). Because currently, the open shelves, though cool-looking, allow sound through. Even if half of the shelf wall was divided through the middle with thick glass (to let light through), I'd be a very happy camper living in this space.
You know what? I know two families in which the mothers slept in the living room. Untill the children were grown up and moved out. So all of those people who say, this won't work out : SHUT UP! Yes, we get it. It wouldn't work for you. It also wouldn't work for me. BUT WE AREN'T LIVING THERE. People do have different priorities, different ways of living. Why shouldn't they live the way it works for them? Saying this is too small, this won't work out makes you sound like some spoiled children with no understanding that other people have other ways of living, other means and other priorties.
And all the people saying they should get rid of the books. WHY? To have empty shelves? They do have enough space for the books. Obviously the books are what they want to keep, so why should they get rid of them? There apartment isn't overfilled with stuff, they are no hoarders, so why the fuck should they get rid of one of the few things they dediced to keep?
Most of those "books" look like magazines or papers - not really on-line material. I think it is a great way to make use of the space. My only hesitation would have been using black in the kitchen but this pulls it off. White would have looked cheap and the black gives it a Japanese feel. Well done.
A fair number of those books look to be picture books for their child, which wouldn't work well on an E-reader. Honestly, we could fill up all of those bookcases with our son's books alone! I'm impressed, but curious about where the toys go...
This is such a clever use of space, and the black kitchen makes a nice change from ubiquitous white. I personally would dislike having so many books/journals on display because they are a dust trap.
Only evidence of a child in this space in the alpha letters on the fridge -- instead of examples of her art. No toys -- and I don't think I see kiddie books either. Good use of space, but it might be like growing up in a Skinner box. (Which didn't hurt Skinner's daughter any.)
I'm never going to downsize my books, especially to something that requires an electrical charge.
Oh no, not even when the now stewing 'Anti-Elitist Party of Just Regular Folks' completely takes over and starts to pound on doors in the middle of the night seeking out the intellectuals, artists and other anti-American sorts. It may be time:
When they came for the artists, I did not paint nor sculpt-is so messy; I did nothing.
When they came for my neighbor Larry and his older roommate Arthur who wore shoes with no socks and rolled up his pant cuffs? -well, I never understood having a roommate in this family-oriented, upscale neighborhood, it seemed cheap so I did nothing.
When they came for the folks with walls of books in their homes? I thought good riddance to elitist snooty pants- I did nothing.
Needless to say- when they came for anyone with more than 5 titles on their Kindle -or just one that's by Nom Chomzkee, but hello- whoever that is?? Point: When they came for me? Devastated. Not one of my neighbors stood up for me! I don't even think they knew my name!
I guess my kids Dakota and Channing will finally be happy- living with their Uncle Henry and Aunt Candace: their kids all have their own Playstations, XBoxers - literally piles O piles of games; the Wii one too w/dozens of those white things you swat around in the air at each other.
They won't even bother downloading essays from inothasbookumoran to 'fool me' anymore.
----
Oh, hyperbole- you spread so thin these days.
Where can I find hardware to built a pull-out bed like that???
I have been wanting to do this in my kids' room for a while but haven't found anything that will work. This is a wonderful space saver!
I love what they did with the bed.
For all you DIYers out there, you can make this bed using trundle bed plans! Ana White worked some up on her site (furniturehacked.wordpress.com). I plan to install beds for my kids in their attic bedroom's unused kneewall space. At night, they can pull the beds out of the wall for sleep, and in the morning just push them back in and enjoy space for play.
Well planned space. Well done. I live in a 1,000 sq. ft. and feel sumptuous. I too have many books and could not or would not let them go. My kitchen is tiny like this one and I have learned to rethink the needs of the kitchen and it WORKS. We are only limited by our imagination. Learned a thing or two here. Thanks.