More Tiny Kitchens We Love

The top of the house is dedicated to a dining area and a kitchen outfitted with steel-topped cabinets from Sanwa Company. Read more about this dimensional three-storied Japanese home here.

In Tokyo, Japan, where the houses are crammed cheek by jowl, two old friends from architecture school have created a 793-square-foot home out of canted concrete boxes. The resident works from an Alvar Aalto table in the living and dining area, adjacent to the small kitchen against one wall. He saved on some elements, such as the plywood cabinetry, and splurged on others, such as the Finn Juhl chairs and Vilhelm Lauritzen lamp. Photo by Iwan Baan.

Tasked with transforming a 93-square-foot brick boiler room into a guesthouse, architect and metalworker Christi Azevedo flexed her creative muscle. The architect spent a year and a half designing and fabricating nearly everything in the structure save for the original brick walls. "I treated the interior like a custom piece of furniture," she says.

Custom-made paulownia cabinets and a roomy balcony keep the compact second-floor living-dining-kitchen area from feeling cramped or cluttered.

In the kitchen and living room, every piece of furniture is mobile. The kitchen table on casters can easily slip into hiding if more space is needed, and the chairs from IKEA quickly fold up for easy removal.

The apartment, measuring just over 400 square feet, opens into the kitchen, which architectural designer Alan Y. L. Chan outfitted with a Dornbracht faucet and a sink of his own design. The black steel backsplash doubles as the back of a built-in bench on the other side. A concrete “ribbon” serves as the main design concept and the countertop, and continues throughout the apartment. A built-in LG refrigerator is located just across the concrete floor at right. Image courtesy Brian Riley.

Sleeping space is adventurously tucked away in an alcove above the kitchen, accessible by a track ladder that slides along a rail mounted above the counter.

The computer-designed kitchen area has the feel of a ship's galley, with everything neatly stowed, yet visible and instantly at hand: It's much the definition of "ship-shape." For dinner parties, well-worn Eames shell chairs are pulled down by David, with the help of a footstool. "I have nearly an eight-foot reach," says the 6'3'' David. ("It gets a little tough if I have to spend a weekend or so alone," says Im.)

He worked with Kartheiser’s existing appliances in the kitchen, trading the old cabinetry for new teak.