If you have ever lived in an apartment in New York City or San Francisco, you may think you know what it’s like to survive in a small space. You chortle at suburbanites with their multiple points of entry. You roll your eyes at homeowners talking about their mixers and blenders and juicers (you make due with one small hand blender, thank you very much.) But living in a small apartment is still vastly different from living in a micro-apartment.
To succeed in a micro-apartment, it takes ingenuity, organization, and lots and lots of storage space. Phoebe Sayswow, an architecture and interior design firm based in Taipei, Taiwan—where space is a premium and micro-apartments are not uncommon—understands this intimately. We recently spotted on Dezeen their overhaul of a 355-square-foot apartment in Taipei and were impressed by their considered design and clever storage tricks. Let’s take a look.
Photography by Say!Cheese, courtesy of Phoebe Sayswow.
Above: The project began when the firm was asked to design a gender-neutral guesthouse prototype, in the existing 108-square-foot space, that could be leased out to young professionals. The architects took advantage of the double-height ceiling by creating three levels. The front door leads into the apartment’s midlevel, which houses the living room. Above: The flooring is consistent throughout the home—glazed tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, and birch planks in the rest of the space. “Birch wood gives a sense of warmth…while the white glazed tiles [with cherry pink grout] is about pepping up spirits,” says Shihhwa Hung, cofounder of Phoebe Sayswow. The dining table is set up for two, but when it’s moved closer to the steps, it can accommodate three, with the steps acting as a “stair bench,” says Shihhwa. Above: One entire wall of the apartment was given over to built-in storage. Cubbies on the mid-level turn into kitchen cabinets on the lower level. The ladder on wheels is moveable to allow access to the cubbies and cabinets when necessary. Above: Opposite the kitchen is a bath with sliding doors, always a good idea in a tight space. Above: An open shower in the bath. The pink grout, along with the stair bench and moveable ladder, adds a “touch of playfulness” in the space, says Shihhwa. Above: Cubbies turn into closets on the mezzanine bedroom level. Above: Three levels (and one dog) in one image.
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