Convertible NY flat expands amid high ceilings & big windows

[Music] we call this project semi nari and it's actually in the old seminary New York seminary was here for many many years so this it has the underlying aspects I think that are quite fulfilling and gratifying and important in this space to kind of calm things down and declutter it the idea was that the bed lifts out of the way so the space does not feel like you're in a bedroom and then we deployed a series of sliding doors that allows this space to be kind of fully enclosed so if you're sleeping and you want you know to rest and you don't want to be seeing the kitchen you know you also don't want noise from the entrance area because the elevator is literally ten feet away from the door so it closed out the entrance area closes off the kitchen and it also closes off the bathroom so really making a sense of serenity and openness and things are out of sight out of mind clarifying a space so that it's like peaceful I mean even just the names semi Neri so this actually had a Theological Seminary space in it so the kind of essence of something that's a little bit more uplifting you know that's why you have the oversized windows the very high ceiling the space had like a really nice feel we really wanted to maintain that and I think if you can capture now it's really quiet you don't have to hear the hum the refrigerator you don't hear the door bells of the people in the hallway you don't kind of have a sense that you're connected so it really just feels like a nice comfortable oversized sleeping room or living room why do we find oh my god we found this old apartment that was like painted in his green color I was like really atrocious and the oversized loft that was built in this space was taking everything over like the leftover space was like this big which was super tiny and the kitchen was fully enclosed it was really rough but you know the guts were good high ceiling big windows and it was sort of work with that so the first transformation is really getting the bed out of sight or coming into the space and it takes up a lot of room so of course we use a more if you bed very efficient kind of nice detail that we like that we've used on other projects where the legs come down automatically right sits in here it's got a comfortable space around it and now it's a bedroom area that's nice and elegant and we've got an extra deep space here so that's what we have these shelves so you can put your pillows and everything behind here you know your blankets can go here if they're thick in the winter for example right but you can really set up the whole space I mean the blankets here your pillows here and you have a place where you can plug your things right so you got your outlets your USB charger so everything is again within reach which is the nice thing about doing built-ins is that they work well for you at the scale of a human-rights like a piece of furniture but it's all built-in right so when you're done kind of put it all away out of sight all right you're entertaining or you're getting up in the morning you don't want to feel like you're in the studio anymore take the bed lift it out of sight you know in a sort of disappears so lots of storage that's built in so closet over here for tall hanging you notice the light comes on automatically when you open up the door tiny little sensor up there which helps to do things invisibly more storage here and again we're making use of the vertical space for hanging right so we have a fixed hanging bar down here which is normal but then we have the pulldown hanging and right above which allows you to kind of really double up the use of storage and again we'll have insight and with it above is all storage but it was also a fun little detail which is that behind here we have our projector the client is really into entertaining and there's a TV over there in that custom cabinet but it actually pops out of there when you need it in the corner over there there's actually a bar fridge so and you can see the alcohols there it's just tucked out of sight you would never know that there's a fridge there little tiniest fridge that we could find we like to do these height adjustable tables pressing these buttons allows you to have a table height or counter height and what the client really liked was the fact that it goes to bar height so I thought that was kind of interesting that the element of the height adjustable table was more appealing not so much for its functional uses additional counter space so it's an extension of the kitchen but the fact that it was like could go bar height was what they really liked I remember that that was kind of a fun moment it's like alright bar height so you can see it's a 37 inches it goes down a little bit more which we don't really need to go too much further it goes out you know to a really good height it's got felt underneath it so we can slide it around so if you want to have dinner where the bed typically is the table moves into there you can have guests it's also I really like this table design is that the storage is all built in kind of inconspicuous thing but this works not only as drawers but so there are actually table Leafs that are up there which I'm putting those on to there it goes from a five foot to an eight foot table it's like a storage space that yeah so basically they're little there's a storage area above you know so above the kitchen area the footprint of that is an area for storage however they use it not that I would know so you can access through this custom ladder or the space up here but it's not quite tall enough to stand up here so when you come up you're kind of like wow cozy yeah you can't stand up but it's really the footprint of the kitchen below you know and then you know it is removable so this ladder from down below I can unhook it and move it to different places to access the storage make sure you don't bang into anything come into here and there's some metal grommets in there that actually lines up perfectly with it did you really have to like line them up perfectly if I could get them into the middle yeah perfect there you go one table leaf heavy got it so you pull out the drawer so the table Leafs now basically go on top of the drawer and the wood veneer just carries through the same thing on this side of course ideally here we would have it moved into the main space right there bit tight yeah say yeah we lowered down table height well do you notice that this is a safety feature actually hits the chair goes back up so it senses the stair as an impediment and it goes back up automatically move the chair oh there we go now we should be fine nice table height I mean the table itself has felt on the underside to help it slide around and you know moving a very far you know you're just moving in a few feet over so now you have a nice large table for guests you know we don't have enough you can move that chair maybe a little more towards the middle but it's not like we have the whole chair right now but this gives me yeah I know these tools I was saying or not the right height yeah for a tiny at 400 square foot apartment eating with ten and you don't really feel like you're in a bed you're not really sitting on the bed you know all right so you wake up you know you're done entertaining open up the kitchen you know the kitchens compact works really well though it's actually an IKEA hack so this is using a kind of IKEA cabinetry all we did is lowered the handles a half of an inch so you just have to redo all the holes but now you don't need pulls you can just grab the underside and then it just creates a gap up there against the ceiling which works well where we've modified certain things for example the dishwasher over here built-in dishwasher you have a little bit of leftover space above no drawer you know this is somewhat customized but guts fitter standard past a little drawer get everything out aside this is a built-in refrigerator freezer right because in here putting a large-scale refrigerator would have eaten up a quarter of the space its plus in this neighborhood for this client didn't need a huge refrigerator this is all they really need to the point that the cooking is kind of minimal for them we just have an induction cooktop with two burners that's really all they needed no small 24 inch oven and then leftover space that doesn't fit you know and just take up every school leftover space what I liked about this kitchen is that it's kind of a nook so we wrapped the floor tile onto the wall we actually wanted to wrap it onto the ceiling to what you didn't do but we did painted the silver gray paint to kind of unified so the floor top this thing cuz the wall comes up on the sides ideally it would go up the ceiling but we didn't go that far so it's kind of a nice interlocking L you know you've got the floor darker grey and you got the backsplash L here as well so the same thing the countertop it comes the backsplash in the same material this kind of continuous Plains really helps to kind of unify things yeah on the way to the bathroom what I like is instead of doing a walk-in closet it's normally a hallway that use for every day but when you want to use it it's a closet you open up these doors and then this is a walk-in closet see this is a fully custom cabinet where we have laundry hampers on the bottom right pull out drawers over here and what we're really doing is using every square inch so these you'll notice are quite deep as drawers and then you'll open up this one it's shallow right cuz there's a column it so up here it's much shallower and in the back here it's much deeper so the cabinet wraps around any protrusions of so there's deeper drawers shallower drawers it's using it all up efficiently and then you're in here basically as a dressing room right so you're getting dressed to get your mirrors on both sides now you don't need the space anymore let's just tuck it away okay so that's a hallway one place that I really like in this project is the bathroom because you might have noticed we have these very tall ceilings they're just thirteen and a half feet and in the old space the bathroom was a loft throughout so it was just an 8 foot 7 foot ceiling space but now when you come in here we have the full height so one of the things that we did to kind of deal with that extra height is we designed these custom lights up there so these cylinders were designed by us they're actually components for industrial products is that kind of float in this space like moments of raindrops kind of coming down and it helps kind of create a lot of mood in the reflection in the mirror you see them if you look up there they're reflected into the glass but there's also a piece of glass up there where it's also reflective and when you're in the bathroom you're enclosed to get into this kind of intimate spot like space alright I mean here it's quiet you basically have this translucent ephemeral light everywhere from the frosted glass from these things aside from taking advantage of the ceiling height which you think is a really nice dramatic feature to this space we also tiled all the floor in the walls together so you get this kind of seamless continuous surface but we also got rid of the tub so now there's a short shower that's a walk-in so you walk in there's a drain and then there's another floor drain basically we have dual floor drains to make sure that we're really good making sure that water doesn't get anywhere this one specifically what's nice is that you have a shower door which lines up nicely with the drain so any water that's coming in here is never gonna make its way into the dry area right so your shower control is here get the showerhead there then you have a beautiful shower area here which is very generous proportion right but it's not a fixed shower surface so that when you are done taking the shower right most of the time you use in the bathroom you don't have that in here it's a larger space you do a dual sink right it's great two faucets two people can actually use the space at the same time what's really nice about these as well is somebody could be taking a shower while the other person can still use the sink in the bathroom only the space is kind of really two separate spaces in one and it just really moves out of sight you barely even notice that one other important detail of this space is this oversized mirror right because it's very narrow but it's very tall it's also quite long so the mirror really helps to kind of create an illusion that the space is much wider than it is so this is a custom-designed cabinet right so it's filled with storage behind and you might notice again that has varying depth because there are pipes in there that we're kind of optimizing and using up to space but there's a ton of storage in there you know so it's important in terms of the space so that the space that reads much bigger it's also I think important because it provides a lot of storage up here where it disappears into the wall and instead of having a large vanity where everything kind of gets cluttered you can have this slight hotel feel where you can put a couple towels and things like that so if you want to get into the shower you would open the door first and then you put the water on the shower on right right so the water will come through here and it might come across the top there but it'd go inside of this channel that trough captures the water and the glass is centered on it so this apart over here is going to drei no there you go so I got a ticket out of the site close it up done you get a little squeegee up there for taking a big water if you like so what I like about the frosted glass is that it gives you a really beautiful quality of light it gives you some privacy so acoustically you're sealed in you also don't really see through it too well but if you're really concerned about privacy I mean for a couple that's fine but if you have guests you slide the other door there right so if guests you want additional visual acoustic privacy you also close this one right so now you'd be much better off with the two doors and then you couldn't hear anything yeah above is all storage there's a ton of storage up there seminary is the word that we chose we actually - a between semi nary because we're actually playing on the connotation that it was a seminary building but it's also seminary as two words it's like half right semi partial half and nary being basically nothing it's almost nothing it's a small tiny studio space it really is not a grand apartment into traditional sense right you don't have great views but it's still an amazing space that's uplifting it works really well as far as a studio so we make do with that right by designing things like we do have a door that closes off the entrance area creating a foyer you know having a four unit studio apartment it's a nice detail it really blocks out the sound the elevator is really close you really do hear people out the elevator everything is tight but you have room so guests come in right Hema jackets shoes away umbrella over here lots of shoes what's great is these are actually height adjustable so depending on what you want to store you can make these taller or lower yeah so it's a studio apartment with a foyer and we have these oversized windows that don't necessary have dramatic view they have awesome kind of urban views of the property that's 20 feet or 30 feet away but then we have all these beautiful shades that kind of block it off you know these are relatively simple moves but I think that they work together in concert to kind of culminate into something that becomes a lot more than what they would on their own right so the first set of door helps to deal with the issue of noise controlled from the lobby right these these set of doors helps to enclose the kitchen right so you've done the kitchen goodnight alright don't need to see the mess you can clean up in the morning also if you're done over here alright close it up and then this space the way it feels right now it's very soft you know I'll turn this light off right now it's all just natural light but very soft right I think the kind of light that you might get in a place of worship or other whatever you go but it's very quiet calm soothing you

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 1,550,230

Keywords: Tiny apartment, small apartment, transforming apartment, transformer apartment, tiny home, sliding furniture, adjustable furniture, small space, transforming home, transformable home, transformer home, transformable furniture, transformer furniture, space-making furniture, space-saving furniture, retractable furniture, fold away furniture, small space furniture, wall bed, Robert Garneau, Manhattan, Manhattan flat

Id: bTKV1i7HxVc

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/strangerzero]

I must say they squeezed it all in very efficiently. It's a little stark and minimal for my tastes but extremely well thought out.

[u/idleat1100]

That’s a pretty decent sized apartment for the city, and with ceilings that high the space is pretty generous. Not to mention great windows.

I always want see this in an apartment with 8’ ceilings.

[u/fluffy2k]

this is a building a concept room and a case study. impressive.