NYC Home Renovations

The architects had to gain approval from the co-op board to break through to the roof—the loft is on the top floor—and add a terrace and master bedroom suite.

Houldin, 10, curls up in the playroom nook which is directly under a side skylight that Pulltab added in order to make the interior rooms inhabitable, as per New York City building code. The custom millwork around the window seat is painted in Rainy Day by Fine Paints of Europe.

Eric Schneider and Michael Chen take in the space-efficient renovation.

Teacher and resident Eric Schneider’s 450-square-foot space needed to be able to accommodate individual areas for cooking, storage, sleeping, entertaining, and, of course, working—without filling the diminutive abode with furniture, or eliciting claustrophobia by chopping it into tiny spaces. The simple and elegant solution was to knock down most of the apartment’s walls, and concentrate all of the living space’s functionality—kitchen storage, closet, bar, bed, lighting, and office—into a single, transformer-like cabinetry unit.

This 450-square-foot apartment includes an origami-like desktop that unfolds to reveal a perforated-steel divider that allows the passage of computer cables hidden inside the office compartment. This transformer-like cabinet helps maximize limited square footage.

Wood WorksFaced with the challenge of a diminutive New York apartment in desperate need of a refresh, architect Tim Seggerman went straight to his toolbox to craft a Nakashima-inspired interior, featured in our November Small Spaces issue.

Visiting a Manhattan apartment designed by Tim Seggerman is like sitting inside one of Nakashima’s cabinets, a metaphor realized most fully in an ingenious "library"—really a glorified cubby with a banded maple ceiling, conjured from a free space adjacent to the loft bed.

Inspired by mid-century furniture designer George Nakashima, Seggerman crafted the components by hand in his home studio. The cabinetry in the kitchen and shelving in the bedroom seamlessly flow, adding the impression that there is more space. Photo by David Engelhardt.

The table’s base, which itself is an additional storage container, rolls easily into place to support the surface.

Having a home office in an apartment of this size might seem impossible, but flexible furniture transforms one room into two.

In this tightly spaced apartment in New York, noroof Architects designed a multifunctional piece of furniture for the kid's room. All it takes is a little gentle pressure to lower the desk to the floor, bringing the kid-size mattress into position for bedtime.

A second-story balcony overlooks a small yard.

Briggs and Knowles’s elegant staircase draws upon the language of the oculus; the stairs are underlit with fluorescent lighting, which accents the line of the steps, giving them an ethereal, almost weightless quality.

Martin's closet (which some would consider to be a perfectly habitable room—or apartment!) offers room for a growing wardrobe.