An Ode to the Tiny Yet Wondrous Apartment of Charlie From “Girls”

By the time we see this apartment in the first season of Lena Dunham’s Girls, we’ve been taught to hold little respect for the man who lives there. Charlie (Christopher Abbott) is the meek and needy boyfriend of attractive and delusional Marnie (Allison Williams). The couple is on the outs—Marnie already wants to sleep with a cocky installation artist, and Charlie recently discovered his girlfriend has fallen out of love with him. Confronted with the reality that the relationship might actually end, Marnie has a self-absorbed change of heart and shows up at his place to beg for forgiveness. This signals a shift in how we view Charlie; he finally has some power in the relationship. As soon as we step into his apartment, that change is only amplified. This doesn’t look like the apartment of a loser.

At less than 200 square feet, the tiny studio is a marvel of space-saving design. Gorgeous birch plywood is everywhere you look. The star of the show is a loft-like platform with staggering steps that hold an open-faced closet underneath, and a partially enclosed sleeping area neatly tucked below. On one wall stands built-in shelving shaded with a selection of colors that feel equally influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and the famous Eames storage unit. The shelves house vinyl records, guitars, and some tchotchkes, painting a portrait of a twenty-something man with twenty-something man hobbies. The simplistic wooden dining table has a Donald Juddesque quality to it. A vintage-inspired screen print hangs above the platform on a white-painted brick wall. Antique rugs are artfully layered over the cheap linoleum floor.

"Seriously, it looks awesome in here, it’s like a Target ad," Marnie says, clearly impressed. (We learn this is the first time she’s been to his place despite the two dating for years.) Charlie is markedly insulted by the comparison. "I think it came out pretty good. It’s not quite a Target ad but whatever," he quips, seeming offended in the same way a quietly creative Brooklyn boy might if asked whether his Noguchi lamp is from Urban Outfitters.

In a 2012 Los Angeles Times write-up, production designer Laura Ballinger Gardner revealed the entire apartment was built from scratch in four days. "We knew from the script that he lived in an older, not good apartment, but he had taken a small studio and done something wonderful with it," she said. The show hints that Charlie has a vague entry-level job at an architecture firm. This is the only time we see his apartment in the entire series, and the HBO dramedy is sure to make it count.

As Girls reenters the digital discourse—its viewership doubled in recent months according to HBO—the design of Charlie’s small Brooklyn apartment still resonates as striking and aesthetically inclined. The smartly arranged studio’s role in his first-season arc always stood out to me: While Charlie and Marnie spar with warm plywood in the backdrop, the flashes of his well-appointed home make him seem less pathetic than in episodes prior. This is the apartment of someone creative, handy, and ambitious—not some handsome but ultimately too-sweet sad sack. Eventually, the couple seems to reconcile. Having sex in the bed, Marnie, on top and darting with regret, slams her head into the alcove’s plywood ceiling. Then, she breaks up with Charlie for good—a well-designed apartment can only do so much.

Top photo courtesy of Laura Ballinger Gardner.

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