This 78-square-foot living space may be one of the smallest apartments you will ever see. Located in the midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen, it's the home and office of architect Luke Clark Tyler.Tyler, a graduate of Cornell University, actually lived in a 96-square-foot space previously and decided to downsize even further by moving to this apartment. To make it livable, Tyler designed and hand-built his own transformer furniture out of plywood and 2x4's to make the most out of what might have been a tight space.It's barely wider than a hallway, but thanks to the high ceilings and thoughtful design and conscious lifestyle changes, Tyler is able to gain in savings: he pays $800 a month in rent -- cheaper than the shared housing in the same area. In addition, rather than purchasing expensive furniture, his customized build-out only cost him $170 at Home Depot.
When Christian Schallert isn't cooking, dressing, sleeping or eating, his 24-square-meter (258 square feet) apartment is an empty cube. To use a piece of furniture, he has to build it. To sleep, he rolls his bed out from under the balcony, his stairs become bedside tables and he can even swing his TV out from the wall. To dine, he lowers a plank from the wall, his flower stand becomes a support and his stairs become a bench. To cook, he clicks a spot on his vast wall of clickable furniture, and a spring-loaded door swings up to reveal an instant kitchen with double-burner, dishwasher, sink, countertop and microwave oven. The full-sized refrigerator and freezer click open alongside the other appliances.Located in Barcelona's hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Christian, a Barcelona-based photographer, says its design was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home. While there's undoubtedly more work involved in constructing and deconstructing your dining room/kitchen/bedroom every day or meal, Christian claims that it helps keep him in shape.
Who says you need a big house with an expansive yard to achieve the American Dream these days? One Washington State resident has found her perfect home in the 140 square feet of living space she's built herself. Located in Snohomish, WA, Apartment Therapy reader Malissa Tack and her husband Chris submitted their teensy abode as part of the site's Small Cool 2013 contest.
It's a basic bungalow-style house with an elevated sleeping loft over the kitchen. The wood slat construction gives the home a rustic feel, which is nicely countered by the super-sized flat screen in the living room. (Link | Via)
Not many couples could live in complete harmony in a space that the New York Post calls the “smallest apartment in the city,” but Zaarath and Christopher Prokop — with their two cats — live in a 175-square-foot “microstudio” in Manhattan's Morningside Heights.
Purchased for $150,000, the co-op is 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide and is on the 16th floor of a building on 110th Street. But, get this — it's only accessible by a staircase from the 15th floor. The couple has:
• A queen-size bed (about 1/3 of their living space)
• Mini-fridge and hot plate (they don't eat in very often)
• One kitchen appliance (a cappuccino maker)
• Closet-sized bathroom with shower with sink and toilet (no long, luxurious baths here)
• Kitchen cabinets that are used for their clothing (they don't eat here, remember?)
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With a space this small, they jog to work, picking up their clothes along the way at various dry cleaners around the city and some clothes are kept in their offices.
The Prokops plan to pay off their mortgage in two years and then plan to remodel by installing a Murphy bed and larger windows. Their only cost at that point will be a maintenance fee of $700 a month. (Link 1 | Link 2)
This article is all about pretty tiny apartments, but we were absolutely blown away when we came across New Yorker Felice Cohen's itty bitty, teensy weensy, 90 sq. ft. studio on the Upper West Side. The 12 by 7 foot apartment definitely isn't for the claustrophobic, but we think Ms. Cohen managed to live there in high style. Plus, if you consider that she only used to pay $700 a month for her miniature pad (in a neighborhood where monthly rents average about $3,600), you can see how her decision allowed her to live large in other ways.
After 5 years, she finally saved enough money to move to an apartment five times bigger. (Link 1 | Link 2)
Polish architect Jakub Szczesny claims to have built the world's narrowest house, just 122 centimeters across at its widest point. The Keret House is squeezed into a crevice between two buildings in the center of Warsaw and will provide a temporary home for travelling writers.Szczesny, who is one of the co-founders of the arts group Centrala, approached Israeli writer Etgar Keret to get involved in the project and the pair started developing a triangular house with just enough space for a single inhabitant to live and work. The body of the house is raised up on stilts and a staircase leads inside from underneath. At its narrowest point the house is no more than 72 centimeters wide. (Link)
How do you make a tiny New York City apartment into a livable 240-square foot space with a sleeping loft? You enlist the help of Brooklyn architect Tim Seggerman, who renovated this Upper West Side brownstone studio into what it is today.The space was in poor shape to begin with, so they incorporated blond woods to build the interior out, including the loft over the kitchen. A nook creates a cubby-like library to crawl into.Can you believe they were able to fit a washing machine in there?! (Link)
Airplane interiors engineer for Boeing, Steve Sauer combined custom furniture from Ikea and West Elm to get the most out of his 182-square-foot home. Inspired by boats, Sauer's tiny Seattle home is pretty remarkable. (Link)
When you work from your home, you need all the inspiration you can get in order to stay focused. These creative workspaces are sure to help you with that.
One of the challenges that people who work from home face is that the line between your home life and your work life can tend to blur. The OfficePOD is the next generation of workplaces; it gives you a separate, private workspace, yet you are still at home. Don't just work from home, work from your backyard. (Link | Via)
This is an old bus turned into a home office. What an awesome DIY project, if you happen to own an old bus. (Link)
Even a small backyard can be a beautiful outdoor workspace. This empty backyard was transformed by the folks at HGTV into an inspirational place to think and write.This outdoor working space boasts a water feature spanning the back wall, a rustic wooden desk, and a deck outlined by river rock. Although it's best suited for more temperate climates, you could set up a seasonal outdoor workspace like this and bring your laptop outside when the weather is nice. It may make for a refreshing change of pace from your indoor office. (Link | Via)
Here's another amazing DIY project: an old piano turned into a desktop. (Link)
Alexander Schlesier, AKA The Steampunker, is the maker of steampunk housewares, furniture, and mad scientist gear. He built this classy and functional computer desk. In this photo he modified a classic Singer treadle sewing machine. Awesome! (Link | Via)
Check out the black hole closet turned office by Gregory Han. (Link)
Architect Elizabeth Roberts opened up the second floor of a late-nineteenth-century brownstone to feature not only a large bathing area, but a home office in the corner, as well. Yup, on the left is a desk with a printer, meant to help you get some work one in between, um, dips in the large bath tub. (Link
Massachusetts-based art assistant Justin Kemp loves his work so much that he decided to turn his office into a beach. 30-year-old Justin installed a wooden box in the middle of his living room, lined the bottom with plastic, and filled it with sand, calling his workplace upgrade "Surfing With the Sand Between My Toes." (Link)
In one of the most famous art heists in history, Johannes Vermeer's "The Concert," valued at around two hundred million dollars, is considered to be the most valuable stolen work of art in the world. In 1990, two thieves disguised as police officers stole thirteen pieces of art from the Isabelle Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. None of the Gardner Museum's missing works have surfaced since they were stolen.Also among the famous paintings stolen in Boston was Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee." (Link | Photo)
Antoine Watteau was a French painter who lived in the early 1700s. Circa 1716, Watteau painted a series of seasonal images for Pierre Crozat, among them Spring (Printemps), Autumn, Winter, and Summer. Of these four paintings, only one remains today. "Spring" was rediscovered in 1964, only to be destroyed by fire two years later, and "Autumn" and "Winter" have never been found.Incidentally, another of Watteau's works, "La Surprise," (circa 1718) was found during an insurance evaluation in 2007. The oil painting was sold at auction on July 8, 2008 for 15 million Euros, setting a world record price for a painting by Watteau. (Link 1 | Link 2 | Photo)
Vincent Van Gogh created nearly two thousand works of art in his lifetime; this is one of just six of his paintings that we know are lost forever. "The Painter on his Way to Work" was housed in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin before being destroyed by fire during World War II.This is one of Van Gogh's many self-portraits, depicting the artist laden with painting supplies on the road to Montmajour in 1888. (Link | Photo)
The work above is another of Banvard's paintings.John Banvard was an American panorama and portrait painter. Banvard's magnum opus was a huge panorama of the Mississippi River Valley. In 1840, the artist spent months traveling up and down the river in a boat, sketching the scenery. He then transferred the sketches to an enormous canvas. The finished work measured twelve feet high by a mile and a half long. The massive panorama was advertised as the "three-mile canvas," (a slight exaggeration), and was brought on a tour of the entire United States. Towards the end of the 19th century, the panorama was cut into several pieces for storage, and the pieces have never been recovered. (Link | Photo)
This painting of "Leda and the Swan" was created circa 1530 by Michelangelo. The story goes that Michelangelo gave the painting to his friend and student, Antonio Mini, who took it to France. Mini may have sold the painting, because it was last seen in the royal collection at Fontainebleau in the early 1530s. The court painter, Rosso Fiorentino, painted a copy of it, which is the only existing version that remains. (Link | Photo)
In 1954, Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that was presented to Churchill at a public ceremony on his eightieth birthday. Sutherland was a modernist painter with a reputation for capturing the "real" side of his subjects. Instead of depicting Churchill as stately, Sutherland painted him as he truly looked, and apparently neither Churchill nor his wife liked the painting.After the public presentation in 1954, the painting was taken to his country home at Chartwell but was never displayed. It wasn't until Lady Churchill died in 1977 that the truth was discovered; she had destroyed the painting shortly after it was delivered. (Link | Photo)
Claude Monet, a founder of the French impressionist movement, created several beautiful water lily paintings beginning in 1883. New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was thrilled to acquire two of these paintings in 1957, only to have them both destroyed a mere one year later.On April 15, 1958, a fire on the second floor of MoMA destroyed an eighteen-foot-long "Water Lilies" painting, along with a smaller (but still large) version of water lilies. Apparently, the fire was started when workmen who were installing an air conditioning unit took a smoking break near paint cans, sawdust, and a canvas drop cloth, igniting the canvas. The fire spread rapidly. One worker was killed in the fire and several firefighters suffered from smoke inhalation. Museum staff tried valiantly to save as many paintings as possible, but between the fire, the water damage, and the destruction caused by firefighters who worked to control the blaze, the large "Water Lilies" painting was a total loss. For three years, the museum tried to restore the smaller of the two paintings, but in 1961 it declared that the work was also damaged beyond repair. (Link | Photo)
Pictured above: "Schubert at the Piano" (1899).Gustav Klimt was a prominent Austrian symbolist painter whose work often focused on the female form. Serena Lederer was a wealthy Viennese art patron who collected fourteen of Klimt's paintings. Lederer sent her collection to the Schloss Immendorf museum for safe keeping in 1943. Nevertheless, the collection was lost when the retreating Nazi party set Schloss Immendorf on fire in 1945. Works ranging from 1898's "Musik II" to 1917's "Gastein," as well as the famed Vienna Ceiling Paintings, were destroyed in the fire. (Link | Photo)
This signed 1963 Collotype called "Le Peintre" (The Painter), by famed artist Pablo Picasso, was lost in the crash of Swissair Flight 111 off Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on September 2, 1998. In addition to this painting, which was valued at about one-and-a-half million dollars, the plane's shipment also contained almost a half a billion dollars worth of precious diamonds and other jewels.En route from JFK airport in New York City to Geneva, Switzerland, the pilots sent a distress signal and were attempting to make an emergency landing in Nova Scotia when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all two hundred and twenty-nine souls on board. Though ninety-eight percent of the plane was recovered from the water, only about twenty centimeters of the Picasso work were located, and the jewels were nowhere to be found. (Link | Photo)
The Colossus of Rhodes was an enormous statue of the Greek Titan Helios, the personification of the sun, which was built in the Greek city of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos between 292 and 280 BC. This massive statue stood nearly one hundred feet high and rested on a fifty-foot high marble pedestal. This masterpiece is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.The striking bronze Colossus took over twelve years to build, and it stood facing the city of Rhodes for over fifty-six years before an earthquake hit the city, collapsing the statue into hundreds of pieces, where they have lain for centuries. (Link | Photo)
