6 rooms into 1: morphing apartment packs 1100 sq ft into 420

the equation new equation I think is less stuff and less space equals smaller footprint more money and more happiness this is intense someone lived here yeah women lived in it for 40 years this is the kitchen and the bathroom this was the original apartment we did a contest we've got over 300 entries from all over the world redesigning that space there we go I think that if you can knock all the walls you get the most sense of space and freedom and then you just use really smart multifunctional furniture to transform the space this is the bed right here that will come up from bedroom to living to working but here's the moving wall in the out position in the in position it'll little slide back here straight into here it's done apartment is done so I can live in it now the main room transforms and so sometimes it's really open sometimes it's with the office which is inside the moving wall open sometimes it's the wide open space with the bed pulldown so it's like a master bedroom you simply pull down two fingers and it has this really cool weighted shelf so you can literally have candles on top that becomes the support I'm very lazy and I figured out how to make my bed way faster than normal let's pretend I'm sleeping say get up you have these two pillows here so quickly strap these in ends up actually being a nice ritual you know every morning you sort of do that takes a minute double it over like this strap here you're ready for your day to start and the bed's gone the office is just right here I work at home often run virtual companies and I'm lazy again and you can keep all this stuff in here's pull it out and you're good to go right so now I have a nice large office of lots of space very comfortable I have an adjustable seat so really simple and then when you want to put it away just throw these in here put this away talk about airing my dirty laundry so the beauty of this is you can be a total mess on the inside I don't even know what I'm going to put in these places there is a ton of storage here and then if guests are coming over guests come you pull the moving wall out pull this out need to get the right size rug so that creates a whole other room here and so here you built a bunch of storage on this side of the moving wall couple drawers and down here and this is a folding desk so for guests is a little laptop sort of and lasts yeah and then in here this is the sports locker definitely lots of storage is important so this place has a ton of storage we've basically gone wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling and so this is the even in the guest room we have much storage up there storage their storage their storage their storage there and then regula right so we're in the guest bedroom it's called the lollipop really comfortable and then I don't usually do that from here but there's that these curtains come out and the magnet is a piece of steel magnets to the end of the wall so it gives a little visual and acoustic privacy if you can actually hear that the tone changes it's something to cover it you better apartment two-bedroom apartment yeah so bathrooms over here you're in the kitchen and so you can sleep one or two here then one or two in here so it's easily four comfortably in a 400 square foot apartment nice nap what that help right now you don't hear me how to actually help I think this is something that anybody could have its phosphated yeah it was expensive but it's a prototype we were trying a lot of new things and so yeah it was definitely expensive but we believe that we can do this at scale at reasonable cost these are your feet let's try the door well you could you could get hit by a normal door as well let's stuck starwars the so now we're back to the living room so then for having guests over we built the kitchen around this table though this comes out like this and you just pull it'll obviously going to cost more than your standard apartment on a per square foot basis yeah I mean this takes a couple of minutes to do for sure also when you're preparing for a dinner for 10 any normal dinner for 10 you're doing a bunch of preparation putting on but the point is you're buying a 400 square foot apartment but it's got the functionality of five six seven hundred square feet so you're basically getting stuff for free this is a full dining room now so sit down for 10 still lots of space bathrooms right there and we made it so that the small space of the bathroom you don't want it to be awkward for people if you're having people right here and you want to take a pee we have a nice double door system has decent acoustics and then a full another so the toilet room is in here and we designed it with a fold down seat so someone's taking a nap or you want to have a private phone call in general you can do this looks like a phone booth you can sit here and make a phone call and it's a beautiful room all in wood and this is a recycled stone it's up a nice little nice little cabinet to sit inside the main idea is get double triple rupal use out of every space you can meditate or get away or how phone call all in here it's just hides a nice little clip and then in here so we separated the two so this way someone can be using the John while someone's having the shower and so that's just basic traffic control we were concerned about how small kind of shower be we were concerned that might not be big enough but with this glass it just feels open and plenty spacious and we took advantage of this the bottom window like well let's make it a seat and so now you can have a nice shower and sit in it and we're gonna have a nice door so yes we ended up being a cute cute little bathroom that was not very big but it certainly does the trick yep yeah so I have a fairly simple I I definitely don't need more than that actually I need to do some editing there so this is like my winter jacket you know I just need one this is quite cool X it's got this really good hood thing so you don't even really need a hat you don't even really need gloves you store your finger I mean for most most of the time I got I love merino wool stuff it's not itchy its antibacterial and so I've really standardized for like socks and underwear and and definitely like sure and so what's great about this stuff is it basis antibacterial so it doesn't smell and so not that I would do this but one could wear shirts and socks and underwear for days literally so it's just cool you end up doing half but half of laundry and it was tough yeah you mean you need less stuff and that's down to shoes and you know kitchen where I can you know so this is the full and colander and strainer and mixing bowl and all your teaspoons and tablespoons and things like all the things you need all compact into one yeah I mean obviously we're quite obsessive but so here's a whisk so it's one takes up less space than the whisk and easy to clean what are the three knives you really they need these two and maybe a paring knife and you're pretty much good to go you don't actually need eighteen knives we're experimenting like done right you could probably design a spork that actually works well but is elegant enough and then all of a sudden you know you have the number of utensils like spoons and forks we also we know how we don't have this yet but you know what what about a great knife that is sharp enough to cut through meat but also rounded enough so you can spread spread butter so I'll setting that combined with a spork and basically that's it so it's like half of your normal cutlery this if you have the right size this actually works well both for soup and for salad and for entrees instead of having like three different plates you have one so obviously we're obsessive and this is a bit of a laboratory and that'll work for some people it will work for others but I don't think people actually when it comes down to they care that much and of course you know stuff it stacks and nests and often people will have a five or six burner stove and they rarely use three and so we went with three so if we have three three in here the induction burners they just plug in so you just pull it out plug it in you're good to go and they're really good they cook really well so we're happy about that and then this takes two gallons to wash I guess normal dishwashers are like six really energy-efficient and you get to be lazy and it's a top loader yeah it's top loader you don't have to pull it down and pull everything out you just sort of put the stuff in and then you know recycling garbage and every little space you know these little stupid things and then we have a freezer and fridge they do this in boats right notice it's basically full booze cold air sinks right and so makes sense to be a top-loading certainly good on energy this one uses some I can't measure but some ridiculously low amount of energy compared although I'm not super happy with it to be honest I think I would it was quite expensive and there there's some simpler side loaders that I pro-ana and then inside here we have a electronic composter basically rotates you add a little sawdust initially it has an air filter and so doesn't the smell so it's really quite smart and then this is a combination microwave convection oven and so you can cook a turkey that's still very space efficient and this is a little this is for machinery so we had some plugs back there so you have blenders and that sort of stuff you can you can have them and get access to them easily with this pillow shell this is all metal part of it is having a beautiful apartment but also it is very very clean and diffuse and then the entrance so the idea here is that the Shoeless of Shoeless apartment so very common in Asia but not very common here and actually very hard to get to happen then you have like a science and I mean I didn't even notice and saying I often break it myself but these are shoe cubbies people can come in and take off their shoes and then this they're also some more cubbies in there and this is the sort of coat closet and then the lights dimmable LEDs so this is a prototype so it's a simple reading light it's actually hooked into solar so we have a couple three panels with that big just outside hook it through to these two batteries and so I have things like a really simple USB light and then this is how I charge my phone so I'm able to be off the grid so we have a heat recovery ventilator this is the vent so we made the vent sort of look like the lights but there's a nice air coming out here and basically it pulls in and filters the air when it expels the air holds on to eighty or ninety percent of the heat or the cool and then it's a really simple fan it's nice and general to be able to avoid a see if you can but it's New York City gets quite hot so we built in a small window unit here I mean slitting panel because you lose a bunch of energy in the winter and if you're enough ten people in here you need you need some AC each person is basically like a hundred watt heater so you get ten people you've got a thousand watt heater going running late okay now you're sure that this is preheated it's not making any sounds that doesn't feel hot yeah I'll just check it off him it's a convection oven which I've actually never used before it has a spinning little centre tray and it actually like circulates hot air camera-ready so you can be totally messy on the inside and no one knows how the part works so the main idea is this main space transforms into five or so different spaces this is the office over here and say the master fit this is when you have guests over this wall is pulled up this comes out you guys are coming around the corner there's a bunch of storage for the guests here public doors down here and up desk here very Oh gasps figure out a ship there's another one other one over there so like my brother stayed last night so he slept here and I slept there it's hard to calculate like if you add up all the rooms here we have like a thousand or a level I think it's 1100 square feet of functionality right master bedroom living room office their bedroom and dining room when you add to the 1100 this is where the two metal strips so for the magnets now obviously you don't actually can't be in the same space and you have to transform it but the main point is you are clearly getting a lot more functionality in the same square footage so that's the same wall deceive it with the walls like being in a 10 bedroom house and all the sudden you're like wait we're just in one room yes over in New York 200 square feet extra is going to cost you two to three hundred thousand dollars it's really important for you to have sit-down minutes for 10 also you ready to do at 400 instead of 600 it's real money and smaller space there's just less air to heat and light and cool and fill with stuff it's just that simple what would this look like before you did all this a family lived in here for like 40 years no shower or no no bathtub I don't want to tell people like how they can be happier I believe that a simpler life is going to make you happier I think we live in very overwhelming times the amount of people we know of amount of things we do the amount of social media amount of stuff that we own there's just a lot going on I press any of the walls so I think that if you can simplify let's focus on less but better across your life that that is going to be a calming thing in a smaller intimate space than in a big space where they feel empty so yeah people okay looking a little corner anyway the whole point of the project really is we've gone from a thousand square feet average home size in the 50s to 2300 2500 now it's just not working for us I think this this is a happy way to live the 400 square foot apartment we have one main space that transforms into five and I can have a great bedroom I can have guests over I can have a sit-down dinner for 10 people I can work at home I'm not sacrificing here there's just something about simplicity and just having less but better stuff it just keeps your life gives you more time you know life's about time and connecting and experience and people and it's not about stuff so if you can simplify and just have less stuff to deal with I think that's going to give you more time and I think more times good you

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 8,912,783

Rating: 4.9034843 out of 5

Keywords: tiny apartment, tiny home, small space, small apartment, home size, simple living, simplicity, transformable furniture, transformer furniture, retractable furniture, built-in furniture, space-making furniture, space-saving furniture, fold away furniture, small space furniture, small house movement, small home, tiny house, lifeedited, graham hill, resource furniture, clei furniture, soho, manhattan

Id: XYV0qATsyts

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/P1ofTheTicket]

Plenty of storage for the minimalist who doesn't own any shit

[u/Hookmeupablast]

"And this part right here folds down into another desk.."

"So TWO offices!?"

[u/[deleted]]

I like when he talks about the jacket as if a hood and pockets were just invented...

[u/broughtsexyback]

Yea this is really awesome. This would work INCREDIBLY well for a single person, but I can't see it working for a couple and definitely not a family. No matter how well planned the space is, 420 feet for two people would not be enough in my opinion.

[u/caw81]

I would hate to work at that desk and stool for a huge amount of time.

[u/[deleted]]

I laughed a lot at the part when he is sitting in this tiny, airplane-sized bathroom and says "it's a beautiful room.. all in wood.."

[u/Zamamam]

"I believe in a a simpler life.." like being stuck all day in a tiny apartment in downtown NYC that most requires me to earn tons of money to keep a tiny roof over my head. Also social media is taking over our life so I put up an ipad guestbook by the door.

[u/funkymonkeyinheaven]

Looks like a copy of what this guy did a couple of years ago

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4yJGTPUR_0

[u/laidlow]

Cool idea but I'd hate to be there in 2 years when things start to fall apart. That moving wall in particular just has trouble written all over it.