Have you noticed? There seems to be a small counterculture pushing back against the McMansionization ideals. Small space living is on TV, websites and magazines all over. Petite is neat.
As someone who shares 639 square feet with a significant other and two significantly rascally cats, small space living is something I not only promote, but practice. But living in a small space often comes out of necessity, rather than choice (as was my own case), and it can be a difficult transition from living with an excess of space to a lifestyle dictated by compromise, planning and just plain doing with less. We can all do with some help from time to time, for new ideas and solutions.
And from across the pond comes Sir Terence Orby Conran to the rescue, with his upcoming release How to Live in Small Spaces: Design, Furnishing, Decoration and Detail for the Smaller Home.
I haven't seen the new edition of this book, but I have the 2001 version. It is great help if you are renovating and can gut your place and make the new layout work to your specifications, but if you have to live with the current layout, it isn't much help. Conran books are always great eye candy, but I wish the version I bought had been more useful for working with difficult layouts that for whatever reasons aren't going to be changed.
Conran's book is OK, but the best book I've found on the subject is One Room Living by Sylvia Katz. It's out of print now, unfortunately, but you can find used copies online.
Although it's targeted more toward loft dwellers, Katz's book is still a great guide to working with a small living space. Its suggestions range from the practical to the extravagant and from cheap to costly, but all of them are presented in a richly visual way that should give any reasonably creative person a lot of good ideas. Not only are several different layouts presented in depth, but also a small catalog of innovative furnishings (from miniature dishwashers to beds that slide under raised seating platforms) and construction materials are provided. The book also walks the reader through drawing a blueprint of your room and potential furnishing layouts, which is a fantastic way to force less-than-wildly creative souls to reexamine how they're utilizing limited space and guide them toward coming up with novel solutions they would never have considered before. I can't believe the publisher let it to go out of print!
Most of the "small space" living books I've seen are for spaces around 1200 square feet.
I'm curious to know what this book considers small.
pb, i agree with you.
the thumb rule for small spaces to function for you is CUSTOMIZE
PB, you said it.
I picked up a magazine once upon seeing that Sarah (?) Susanka, the "Not So Big House" lady, had written an article about kitchen design. Flipping through the mag in the checkout line, the layout sketched in the article was exactly what I had in mind for my kitchen/dining space.
When I got home I tried to figure out exactly how big that kitchen layout actually *was*. The dimensions weren't stated, but I was able to figure out the scale based on a standard 30" wide stove and 24" deep counters.
It was 700 square feet. The same size as my entire house.
"Not So Big," my foot.
Another reading list suggestion for small spaces:
Poking around the Amazon page for Conran's previous book, I found that one of the customers who'd bought/reviewed it had bought/reviewed several books on living in small paces. I thought her reviews were informative. You all might like to check them out. Click on my name for the link to her review page.
Living space in my studio (sans kitchen + bath) is about 132 sq ft. So far, I have seen only one apartment this small in a book, and that apartment was 150 sq ft. It would be truly cool to see a super-small apartment book that had ideas for rental apartments.
smallest -
I guess the only way to get a book for the smallest design spaces is to call for people who would like their smallest interiors to be professionally designed and design it for them.
More often small spaces rentals are bought/rented by those individuals like us because we want to stay in a particular location and we have a certain budget. If it is not customization, small apartments ( 150-500 sq.feet ) for single or two cannot function optimally. Those who customize spend a great deal of money because customization means calling for professional designers until and unless the designers want to do give some dole out which they would not because it is their bread and butter.Going down memory lane I recall seeing on a TV show that some guy had bought a 450 sq. feet apt in chelsea ( he works in retail/advertising ) and he called in the people who made sets for him. The desgner did not charge him anything ( because he was his friend) but the customization cost him around 100,000 plus which was 1/6th of the cost price of the house.Go figure what small spaces can do to your budget when it comes to customization.