Manhattan ‘Origami’ apartment unfolds into four rooms
Small spaces are trendy. In New York, they’re also a necessary reality.
Remember this 90-square-foot apartment?
In 2005, Eric Schneider, a third-grade teacher, bought the largest space he could afford in Manhattan: a 450-square-foot studio apartment.
It was twice the size of the apartment he lived in while teaching in Japan.
"It was basically an open rectangular space," Schneider told Fair Companies. "There wasn't much to it, there was just a couple of old closets, an old corner kitchen and that was it.”
Architects Michael Chen and Kari Anderson of Normal Projects reconfigured Schneider’s tiny home into an origami-like space, in which four distinct living spaces — a bedroom, an office and library, a guest bedroom and a living room — and countless other configurations all tuck into an oversized blue cabinet.
Watch Chen’s tour of the inspiring tiny space, dubbed the “Unfolding Apartment,” below.
“It's partly partitioning the space, it's partly making its interior available and its partly also creating lots of different areas of overlap where you get like a living area and a bed area and a dining area and a lounge area and they're not necessarily separate but they're sort of leaking into one another in a way,” Chen said of the design.
In all, Schneider spent about $70,000 remodeling and furnishing his $235,000 apartment.
It’s a stunning transformation, but still can’t compare to Gary Chang’s Hong Kong apartment. With only 344 square feet, his “Domestic Transformer” has 24 different room configurations.
Would you ever consider a drastic downsize? More importantly, could you handle the extreme clutter-free lifestyle this sort of living demands?
More from Shine on Yahoo! Canada
Space-saving furniture
Energy-saving home improvements
Instant 'pod' homes
