apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm not sure whether to make a 2001 Space Odessy joke, or reference the Minimalist episode of AbFab. This is just stunning at 100 SF. Im really curious about what the chair in the 'techno' area is. Not my style at all...but WOW!

Nicely done, extremely small space. But I'm afraid I'd go insane from claustrophobia living in this ultra tiny space!

101sf?! How is that possible? Yep, too modern for me but it really is stunning in an outer space kinda way.

This. Is. Intense.

This is very annoying that they still keep accepting entries from the UK. I raised the same issue last year, and I guess the organizers can do anything they want, but it is absolutely 10 times easier to furbish a small space with cool gadgets in the UK than it is here. Every thing, starting from a small vanity, to stoves etc, are less money there than here - even after the high currency rate conversion GBP - $$$ (GBP stronger) and ten times more stylish and modern lines... Shopping in the US for anything modern is a chore - in Europe is basic - nothing too hard....

Whoa.

Do you shower while sitting on the toilet? I'm so confused!

More information please Judith. Do you actually live here? All year round!? Where are your things? Are you sane?

Cool -- bordering on too cool. An amazing design statement, but would you really want to live here?

Furthermore, it reminds me of the age-old question: Why do europeans avoid shower curtains like the plague?

I'm really torn on this. Is it an impressive use of the space? Absolutely. Do I like this apartment and think I could live in there for a week? No way in hell. I'm gonna have to go with 'cool.'

This place was a little too claustrophobic for me.

Very impressive for 101 square feet! Not sure I could live there without feeling claustrophobic, but for such a small space this person's style certainly fits.

Wow... I think it is great... but just looking at the pictures makes me have a claustrophobia induced panic attack! Good for you for making it work. Also I second the toilet/shower question.

In a bigger place this look would be much too sterile, but to maintain one's sanity in a space that's this shockingly small, I think the white box minimal look is the way to go. Cool.

Seriously...is this a joke? Do you REALLY LIVE here? Honestly...there is plenty of room on the planet for everyone. You don't have to live like this!!!

Is this a luxury room on the rocket hotel to mars??

Jail cell chic.

Leather floor tiles? I think this should be disqualified instantly for that.

I feel as if I'm on an airplane.

Uhhh is this an apartment or a German submarine from the future?

Striking! But I keep expecting Sigourney Weaver to pop out and kill an alien.

Razor-sharp and slightly terrifying. I love it.

Though I apprciate the smallness of the space, there doesn't seem to be a lot going on here. Where is the whimsy other than the cheekiness of showing an unmade bed (which I like, by the way)? Maybe this space is too small for a personal touch. IDK. Mayne there is only room for some stools and nothing more. This feels like living in a science experiment to me.

i am so confused :/

I love it. Sure it's more designer concept than most and it is best for a small market but having lived in 9x5 berth for months on a yacht I would love to live here. really smart design.

Cramped as anything, but I love the style of the place. I'm sure I could eventually get used to the "bathroom as wetroom" but it would take a while.

Ack! This makes me afraid of the future. As if all the environmental degradation, Charleton Heston characters, and killer robots weren't enough, we'll also have to live in miniscule apartments with airplane implements sticking out of the walls, and the TV shows will be about Nazi-esque women in severe clothing. :(

Holy.
Crap.
And it has a kitchen? I think I just lost my mind a little.

Valium, anyone?

I have to disagree with Anusha73 - as a Brit who lives in a 33square metre flat in Spain (I know I should work that out in feet, but it's tiny anyway!) I can safely say that neither country is particularly cheap when it comes to furnishing (big they big or small pieces) especially miniscule Spanish wages! And I think it's great that AT accept entries from around the world.

As for the flat, it is cool what they've done with the place, but it doesn't seem like it would be a very uplifting place to live.

I meant be they big or small :-)

WOW...where do you keep your things though? Shoes? Coats? There doesnt seem to be space for anything...!!

Anusha73 -

While it maybe easier for people in the UK to get some items, it's going to be different no matter where you live. I live in AL where is more difficult to get anything but the traditional Southern accents... Part of the contest is being who you are and creative.

Ditto nadyamadrid!

I'm guessing the shower sprays around the entire bathroom like bathrooms on boats under a certain size/elegance level. The shower nozzle sprays the whole waterproof room and you *could* use the toilet as a shower seat if you wanted to.

I wouldn't be able to live this small myself, but it's not really so different than a dorm room in size or how you would use the space; although the style is clearly tremendously more lux!

Amazing! I agree - the minimalism would be a must in this home. You've really made this space everything it could possibly be. I really hope you have a fabulous view.

Monastic, I love it.

How is this smart design when there's no storage for life's little luxuries like, um, clothing?

As far as I can tell, all of the storage houses electronics. Either the photos/ floorplan are deceiving or I call BS that someone actually lives here. I feel like the "entrance door" just leads into an actual house and this apartment is an "experiment."

claustrophobic.

amazing use of such a small space; and I agree, why not try some experimental treatments when you are in 101 sf?

This entry is not my style at all, but a tour de force of restraint and strict discipline (one might even say self-denial) critical for such a tiny space.

I'm curious what we don't see. I can't work out where the sleeping area/loft is in the flat or how Judith gets up there. Is the loft sf included in the 101 total? Also, are those bright squares in the walls tiny windows or some kind of LED fixtures?

Interesting. Do you get up to your loft bed via ladder?

I'm guessing that this is a professional who might use this as a "city-home." Perhaps she keeps most of her clothes at work?

It's cool but it gives me the heebie-jeebies for some reason. I find it more fascinating trying to figure out who this person is.

Hmmm, but why????

I can't believe this is a primary residence...wasn't that one of the rules? Do people in London with money really live like this? and why?? Oh well, I voted "super cool" anyways.

If you click on Judith's name you go to the website for the project. This is clearly not a primary residence and no one is living in it. It's looks like it's meant to be a novelty rental space.

Best. Comments. Ever.

Yes but Londoners will accept life in shoe boxes for the best post codes.

Most everyone outside of style magazines has a shower curtain in the UK. And as others have said our gadgets and furnishings aren't cooler or cheaper or easier to source.

leather floor? not that such a small space would get a lot of foot traffic...

having lived in a tiny (but not this tiny) bedsit apartment in central london, I can say that people there *do* live like this, although perhaps not full-time (house in the country and all that), and that at least with this place you don't have to share the bathroom down the hall with the rest of the building! I assume whatever tenant this place ends up with will bring in their own personal touches to liven it up.

oh no, we've been duped, this entry was submitted just to hype some project. This entry should be disqualified since "Judith" described it as though she actually lived there, when of course she does not! that's just lame.

101 square feet! Wow! But...Oh! on the comment above. Hmmm.

So, that extending chair/chaise longue is a Dragonfly, designed by Karim Rashid for Bonaldo of Italy...

Hmmm. I think that I might actually need one of those.

It's an incredibly small space, and the design is really impressive. I'm renovating a 250 square foot apartment, so this is pretty inspiring...

Ouch! The chair is about $3000 discounted - and that's before shipping it over to the US...

I could never live here. But I voted "Cool" because I expect Hal to ask me if I am feeling OK. Very space-age chic.

Apartment Therapy has been punk'd!

I think it's amazing!

Small... Cool... Fabulous!

wait... i don't see any windows.

Cool. Interesting space with some small cool ideas -- but the bulk of the credit has to go to the architect designer for their creative use of space, not so much to the owner/tenant, who wasn't left with much to do.

I want to take back my vote of supercool. This entry should be disqualified.

This is another space which feels like the architecture has done all the work and there's really nothing that the person living there has done to personalize the space much. It's clean. It's cool. But, I'd have been more impressed if it had been "maximalist" given the space as that'd have really shown some ingenuity and creativity.

what's next? entry from the space shuttle?

I'm frustrated by the lengths this person has gone through to elaborating so tiny a space. That alone is enough for me to vote not-cool.

Obviously the story here is WHY the space is so small, not whether there's an iPod dock in there.

It's a little anxiety inducing to look at but I still want to see more...

As per the website (click on Judith's name), this is newly built, and will be available for rental starting in April 08.

It looks like no one lives there because...no one has ever lived there.

Why not just use the money spent on all the gadgets to buy a bigger place? That's what I don't understand about some of the super-fab space-saving stuff you can buy. I once saw a sofa bed at Paltrona-Frau for something like $8000. I'd just pay extra in rent to get a bigger place than buy a sofa bed... Ludicrous.

the first photo made me wonder if we were voting on the smallest coolest gynecologists office.....

No, Judith does not live here; it is a flip-n-rent!

http://web.mac.com/digitalcity1/Lux_Pod/Lux_Pod_Home/Lux_Pod_Home.html

Click "For Rent."

Anusha73,

I've lived in both the US and the UK - what you've said isn't really true.

i'm renovating a space that's considerably larger than judith's, and i can attest that it's not all that easy to change something that doesn't work/you don't like. i can imagine in a space this small it would actually be worse. besides the obvious debris fallout, there are basic space considerations. going to tear out the floor and replace it? where'ya going to put those chairs when you do? redoing the bedroom would be a nightmare if you had to touch the floor or the wiring.

i am curious, though, about the wet room. i'm hoping to do one myself in the not too distant future, but i can't find very much info on them here in the states.

oh. and pphhttt for pimping your biz and not showing us where you lives.

Anushka - the grass is always greener on the other side.

I too wonder where the stuff is, and when Ashton Kutcher is going to pop up on that lounger....

Kind of cool. You can feel as if you are in a club, without even leaving your apartment. As trendiness go, could get old really fast.

Fascinating to look at, but I don't feel it's really a livable space. There's nowhere to put simple ordinary things like clothes and shoes, much less to store any mementos or off-season clothing.

What an amazing space! If I lived here, I'd probably be down at my local coffee shop more than I actual hung out here, but as a weekday pad this is amazingly well equipped in such a small space.

If it were her home, I'd vote super cool, because it is. I'd never want to live there, but it does a hell of a lot with a room the size of my old dorms. I like the wetroom.

Reminds me of the place where Bruce Willis lived in 'the third element'.

Awful entry as it abuses the "spirit" of this contest. It's the equivalent of submitting a model home from a Ryan Homes development for a house tour.

Why isn't there an option ABOVE the super cool button for "Effin'-Amazing-Automatic-Winner-Right-Now-Award-For-Greatness " button?

Hello everyone, Judith here. The property was completed about 2 months ago and both my husband and I are sleeping there. (Ideally the property is for one person.) Out flat (around the corner from the Lux Pod) has had all the furniture removed in preparation for a refurb. We also spend time in Latvia, where we are building a penthouse, also to a high specification. At the moment our time is spent between London and Latvia.

The bed platform is over the shower room and lobby. It is a double. It is accessed via a bespoke Sarah George clear perspex (treads) and coated aluminium ladder. When not in use the ladder sits on a holder which hangs on the side of the corner cupboard (refer main pic). The silver colored Roman Blind is in front of the floor to ceiling window (3m high). The ladder, when in the holder, hangs next to the shade.

There is a Fakro roof window at the end of the bed deck. The property is bathed in light (from north & west) which adds to the feeling of space.

The wet room has plenty of room to stand between the toilet and the round basin. The length of the room is 1.9metres x 1metre wide. The toilet & basin are Italian Flaminia Mini Link, Work in Progress. Both have the smallest projections I could find. There is a beautiful thin rectangular Kessel floor drain and the water runs directly into it. The floor is heated and so is the mirror, so the room dries quickly, although I wipe it down with an absorbent cloth (chamois). The door is a glass shower door with an acid etched modesty panel - to let natural light into the room. Brits don't have shower curtains and prefer to use glass panels (if over a bath).

The architect created the drawing for the "pod" and I planned the interior. After I designed the space, I created models in SketchUp to ensure everything would fit. The builder and other suppliers used the print outs and looked at it in 3-d on my computer, so they understood everthing before they commenced. Many things are hidden and are not obvious on first inspection.

I project managed the work, spending on average 20 hours each week for over a year whilst the internal space was created. It was very challenging as I made no compromises and sourced the smallest fittings & fixtures of a high quality. The items are expensive (and probably about the same that it would cost for people in the States) and took a great deal of research to source them. There are many items which are Italian and German. The Lutron is USA. I planned the space for long term durability. (Like USA, the Pound has also devalued against the Euro).

The ceiling height is approx 3.5metres, you can see in the main pict, above the TV & speaker part of the overhead cupboards. They are 2.5 metres long and 500cm deep. The wet room has storage, so does the Norbert Wangen K4 kitchen and there is storage in the corner cupboards for clothes to hang and shoes etc. Plus a fold up ladder and the shelves and the techno stuff at the top. On the bed deck there is a cavity for drinks and electrical items, plus a shelf near the roof window. The overhead cupboards can be opened directly from the bed deck or via a step ladder. They are made of heavy, dense acrylic, called Parapan. Next to the kitchen there is a traingular cupboard. You can see it next to the blud slender phone on the wall. The cupboard door opens out over the kitchen's sliding top. It houses some glassware, plus a lot of electrical equipment.

The blue light in the photos is the bottom section of the Wever & Ducre Lotus wall lights. They have a changeable glass filter. It is either clear or blue, like you see in the pic. They have been modified to work with Lutron Grafik Eye, and are pre-programmed for different lighting moods. The shade is controlled by it as well. One remote controls it plus the B&O TV.

The property looks totally different at night compared with day. The three round spherical items on the wall are CjO'Neil Solas wall lights. The are hand made from porcelain and painted with gold leaves. They look stunning when turned on.

Unfortunately, in London, space is very expensive and there is a need for small spaces like this. This property has a value in excess of £200,000 ($396K). An 850sq foot apartment in London is considered as large - not small by any means. On average, a one bedroom would be approx 400sq feet.

The challenge in design of such a small space is very complex and I thought it appropriate to enter the Lux Pod in the competition as people might find some of the solutions I found interesting for a truly tiny space.

The Lux Pod actually is very uplifting. It has a lot of serenity to it and it is in a very quiet area and one can hear the birds in the trees singing. Most of the surfaces are reflective, so a lot of light gets bounced around. Having the TV and the music system and different lighting effects does also add to the feeling of harmony and happiness.

I hope I have answered your questions and thank you for taking the time to comment. Best wishes, Judith

oh man, after reading the comments after i posted mine, i see that this is just a rental and the person doesn't live there! i wish i could take back my vote, since this entry isn't really being LIVED in.

I think the space is still cool, but one of the rules says you have to be living there for it to count.

I couldn't get a feel for anything from those pictures.

Sleeping there is not the same as living there.

they are living there now.
what metalguru said the blue underlight, overall lighting effects bird sounds, Judith's paragraph 12--terrific!
it looks like living inside a Ladytron song

I'm with DWR... sleeping around the corner from your actual home sounds like urban camping. Fine for a few nights, but you can go home to change your clothes and shower.

While this is incredibly cool as a treehouse, or a separate entrance abode for a teenager, it just does not seem livable.

omg. $396K. serenity? uplifting?!!!! my head is spinning.

mommy, help.

$369K ?

Talk about a bubble. LOL.

@orangered: thanks for pointing out paragraph 12 (it's second to last)....

LOL!

Hi everyone, Judith here again. Thank you so much for your comments. I haven't had such a giggle for ages (too busy with the Lux Pod). Wow, what fertile minds you people have. I love it.

For Clairepetrol -Yeah, I wouldn't mind Ashton Kutcher sitting on my lounger, he can even try out the Tempura mattress, very Nassa. Due to the size of the Lux Pod Demi will have to wait outside whilst I show him around. Perhaps you can come over and guard the door. That too, is very special. Ashton is currently in London so I will see if he is interested (I wish...). He can listen to Ladytron on my iPod whilst reading The Mars Manifesto. I am sure he can multitask ;-)

The lounger folds back to a normal chair size. Yes, it is a Dragon Fly. I bought it from an Italian company www.owo.it. It was pricey, but is versatile, which is paramount in a space that size. It swivels (important) doesn't take up much room (95cm front to back) when it is folded in and is very comfortable when opened out. It is leather and is extremely well made.

For Jenny in DC the "airline implements" sticking out are the Eclipse TD speakers and yes, they do resemble an engine of an aircraft. I found out about them years ago when I purchased an Apple Mac - they sell the tiny versions with Macs and if it is cool enough for a Mac...well, it is cool enough for me. My husband fell in love with them and has been allowed to sell them in the Baltic States. (Get yer ya-ya's out, oops, I mean Atlas out, folks!). The sub woofer and amp are also pretty amazing design wise and the quality of the sound is very clear and crisp. Sting has the top of the range model in his home music studio I have been told.

In all seriousness, thank you for your gems of futuresque parlance; it has been most entertaining! Cheers.

Wow! this is fantastic use of space and a lot of thought has gone into the fittings. I would be happy to live there as I know London has limited space. Judith has unbelievable talent.

I'd have to check out more photos to decide if I'd want to live there. But just based on the few images available, I would definitely stay there for a vacation-length time. Like a great hotel to get away to. The wet room/bathroom is gorgeous.

Well, what can I say?....
The idea is great, and because I have seen the construction site from the beginning, and then the final result, I can say that they have done a very good job.
Just because I have supplied the Boffi kitchen,....well, please, have a look on it..!

well this is the smallest space i have ever seen, therefore deserves super cool!

Double bed over a wetroom? This is madness. London is not so short on space (if indeed it is, esp compared to Manhattan) that anyone lives at all like this.

Beyond luxurious and smart for a very short stay / occasional pied a terre is the best one could say, surely. And too high end for a staff-pod.

extra cool points for having robyn on the tv!!! I know thats not a design element but I am pro universal good taste.

I truly enjoyed the comments here. Love honesty. I think the use of space is brilliant and of course the choice of furnishings is testimony to smart and simple tastes to enhance the look. Would I live there? I would answer that with the post by nazd

...there is plenty of room on the planet for everyone. You don't have to live like this!!!
posted by nazrd

It's too small for me.

Once again, (don't hate me) I always feel sorry for people who live like this.

Weasel Dearest is Mr. Dangerous

nice lines and design but i would feel like i would have to stand still and spin around, it just doesn't feel like there is much space to take a step...wish i could get more of a feel for the space as a whole, it's still hard for me to visualize.

but bravo at creating an attractive look in such a small space!

and I thought that my apartment was small...