Search Results for: tiny apartment

April 4, 2017

Noroof Architects’ Bed-Stuy porcHouse re-imagines the classic American front porch

"The great American front porch was just there, open and sociable, an unassigned part of the house that belonged to everyone and no one, a place for family and friends to pass the time," said architect Davida Rochlin in her essay "Home, Sweet Home." It was this idea that Brooklyn-based firm Noroof Architects kept in mind when redesigning this 1879 two-story, wood-frame home in Bed-Stuy. It was structurally sound and maintained original details like its covered porch with original cornice and trim, marble mantels, and carved stair balusters, but mechanically required a full gut renovation. To complete their "porcHouse" vision, Noroof added a two-story addition at the rear that they say "creates a kind of ‘interior portico.’"
See the whole place
April 2, 2017

March’s 10 most-read stories and this week’s features

March’s 10 Most-Read Stories New rendering for the Sheepshead Bay condo that’s the tallest residential building in South Brooklyn The 10 best plants for apartment dwellers Exciting new details emerge for the TWA Terminal hotel Oiio’s ‘Big Bend’ proposal for Billionaires’ Row would be the world’s longest building The Urban Lens: Inside McSorley’s Old Ale […]

March 25, 2017

Weekly highlights: Top picks from the 6sqft staff

Swale floating park returns this spring with a new look Kushner Cos. vision for 666 Fifth Avenue has Zaha Hadid design and $12B ambitions Philip Johnson’s Rockefeller Guest House, a ‘secret’ modernist gem on Manhattan’s east side Artist who created Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull’ angered by ‘Fearless Girl’ statue $5.5M ask for renovated Hamilton Heights […]

February 14, 2017

20 New Yorkers tell 6sqft what they love most about NYC

When you couple recent uncertain times with the gray February weather and frigid temperatures, it can be easy to get bogged down in feeling a bit melancholy. But today is the day of love, and in honor of that, 6sqft asked 20 New Yorkers--from fellow reporters and bloggers to architects and urbanists--what they love most about NYC. From big-picture things like the skyline and street energy to smaller fortunes like having tea with friends and spotting an old ad on the side of the building, there's plenty here to lift your spirits and make you fall in love with this great city all over again.
All the responses right this way
February 14, 2017

Dreamy Scandi-chic Soho studio renting for $5K deserves a big hygge

Other than "expensive," (at $5,000 for a diminutive studio), we really can't think of a better description for this clean and cozy pad than hygge, the Scandinavian super-meme that has recently been sweeping the lifestyle and interiors world. Pronounced “hoo-guh,” and defined as "a concept, originating in Denmark, of creating cosy and convivial atmospheres that promote wellbeing," it pretty much sums up this sweet studio at 110 Thompson Street.
Come in and relax
February 8, 2017

MKCA transforms 225-square-foot West Village pad into a super-multi-functional home

The master of small apartment design in New York is at it again. The architecture firm MKCA managed to transform a 225-square-foot space that connects to an adjoining five-foot-tall storage attic into a highly functional apartment. MKCA has made a name for itself by designing claustrophobically tiny spaces into enviable apartments through creative and space-saving techniques. (Read more about the firm's design style in this 6sqft interview with MKCA's founder, Michael Chen.) This apartment, located in the West Village, is no different--a customized wall of storage created space for a bed, table, hangers and shelving that can be taken out and tucked away as the owner desires.
learn how the apartment works
November 17, 2016

A penthouse off Central Park on the Upper East Side for $190K? Believe it!

For those of you who say you'd live in a closet just to be near the park, this might be your dream home. And this petite penthouse at 103 East 84th Street isn't just any closet (though it does appear to be under 200 square feet); not only is this unique co-op in a lovely full-service elevator building off Park Avenue, but the space that has been called "Manhattan's most adorable penthouse" boasts a charming and sizeable private terrace to rival many a million-dollar property.
Find out more about this charming garret
October 26, 2016

My 630sqft: Inside ‘Store Front’ photographers Karla & James Murray’s East Village home of 22 years

You might not immediately recognize their names, but there is no doubt you know their work. Photographers James and Karla Murray burst onto the scene back in 2008 with the release of their seminal book "Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York," a work culling hundreds of images of the bygone retail graphics that once covered the city—and jointly, the mom and pop businesses that vanished alongside them. Since then, the Murrays have released two more tomes of the same vein, and collected countless awards and accolades for their documentary work along the way. In fact, their photographs can now be found in the permanent collections of major institutions around the world, including the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the New York Public Library. Their images also decorate the homes of countless celebrities, among them Sarah Jessica Parker, Ralph Lauren, Alicia Keys and Roseanne Barr. In this week's My sqft, 6sqft visits this warm and spunky husband-and-wife team in their East Village home to talk about their tenure in the city (they moved downtown in the 80s—though Karla is from the Bronx) and their ongoing efforts to chronicle what remains of "old New York." We also get a peek inside their studio apartment/workspace of 22 years, which as Karla and James share ahead, has some crazy stories of its own.
go inside their home here
August 8, 2016

Architecture Workshop’s 400-Square-Foot Studio Has a Secret Bedroom and Sleeps Six

Almost every New Yorker has been tasked with the challenge of smartly utilizing a tiny apartment. But Architecture Workshop takes the prize for the unbelievable challenge of transforming a 400-square-foot prewar studio into a modern space that hosts 10 for dinner, sleeps six, and includes a home office to boot. The firm created a multi-functional space with tons of cabinetry that blurs the line between furniture and architecture. The result, as the firm puts it, is "an airy modern apartment where everything has its place."
See how they did it
June 15, 2016

242-Square-Foot West Village Love Nest Asks $3K/Month

6sqft previously featured this 242-square-foot love nest at 352 West 12th Street, tucked into a dreamy cobblestoned corner of the West Village, as a fine example of brilliant interior design and creative small-space living. The apartment has served as home sweet home for newlywed couple Jourdan and Tobin Ludwig–she works in business development and he's a purveyor of artisanal bitters–who have lived in what they call their "wee cottage" since moving in together six years ago. Jourdan bought the co-op in 2011 for $270,000, and the couple invested $300,000 in a sanity-saving renovation. After spending their "best years in in the city" here, the owners have listed the home for $3,000 a month, reports the Post.
Take a look at how cool small can be
April 9, 2016

Weekly Highlights: Top Picks From the 6sqft Staff

Madonna Sues Upper West Side Co-Op Board Because Rules Don’t Apply to Her Screw Smiles Bring Happiness to Your Hardware and Polio Vaccines to Children in Need $8M Tribeca Penthouse Is a Downtown Dream With a Dramatic Staircase and Heavenly Sunsets Rafael Viñoly’s Meatpacking Building to Include World’s Largest Starbucks, See New Renderings UES Firehouse […]

March 14, 2016

Clever Bed-Closet Combo Makes Room for Storage and Sleep

Dealing with a closet-sized bedroom or guest room? Optimizing the space for storage and sleep makes the familiar coziness of the tiny NYC bedroom a lot less frustrating, and this compact bed-storage combination from French design company Parisot is a cool solution. Shelves on the side store books and knicknacks, but the real storage solution is within the bed's frame. Lift the mattress to reveal drawers and shelves big enough for seasonal wardrobe items, linens, boxes and anything else you'd like to store out of the way but still have access to in the room.
Find out what's hiding under the bed
February 18, 2016

Common’s Shared Living Concept Brings $3,000 Bedrooms to Williamsburg

The perpetual waves of recent graduates and other young professional hopefuls streaming into New York City seem to be finding themselves stuck when it comes to finding a place to bunk between cubicle and pub. So it's no surprise that a growing field of enterprising entrepreneurs--after observing the moderate success of the co-working model and the mind-melting success of Airbnb–have stepped in with a hybrid of all of the above. 6sqft previously noted the Wall Street launch of co-working startup WeWork's communal living concept. Now, another co-living player, Common, who recently brought upscale shared housing to Crown Heights, will be opening the doors on a communal residence in prosaically trendy Williamsburg at the corner of South 3rd Street and Havemeyer. Common CEO Brad Hargreaves with partner Henry Development is building a 12-suite, 51-bedroom, 20,000-square-foot residence, the company's first ground-up effort here. The most buzz-worthy bit about this new addition is that members will pay $1,800 to $2,700 a month for a bedroom in one of 12 duplex suites, with one, two or three other roommates. The higher-end numbers represent rooms with a private bath–essentially a studio with friends with benefits.
What's the story here
February 10, 2016

New Furniture Collection Solves Our Spatially-Challenged Living Arrangements

Most New Yorkers are more than familiar with the trials and tribulations posed by our spatially-challenged living arrangements. However, with every one of life's obstacles, there's a potential opportunity waiting just under the surface. That's exactly what Parisian designer Gilles Belley intended to uncover when he was awarded a grant from VIA, a French organization promoting local design. With funding in hand, Gilles set out to research and develop furniture that would address the needs of modern city living. His solution includes a collection of three pieces formally titled "Rooms," which includes AREA, WALL and BLOCK, each designed to provide more flexibility for how we function in and define our living spaces.
Learn all about it
December 21, 2015

6sqft’s Most Read Stories of 2015!

It's that time of year when we take a look back at all the news-making topics that caught the eyes of 6sqft's readers. Jump ahead for our top stories of 2015 in everything from new developments to architecture to product design, people, celeb real estate and NYC history. You can also peruse 2014's most popular posts here to see how they compare!
all the top stories of 2015 here
November 13, 2015

This Sprawling Park Slope Classic Seven in ‘Brooklyn’s Flatiron Building’ Asks $2.59M

Believe it or not, there are still some cases where your money goes farther in Brooklyn. Take this four-bedroom classic seven at 47 Plaza Street West in north Park Slope, a sprawling elegant pre-war co-op in the 1928 Rosario Candela-designed building sometimes referred to as “Brooklyn’s Flatiron” due to it's pizza-slice form–which gives the home's interior a unique, er, angle. The 2,350-square-foot apartment has been recently renovated, making it comparable to the size of a modest suburban house. It’s one of those co-ops where just looking at the floor plan makes you long for a time when tiny apartments weren't a thing (Yes, there’s a separate servants’ entrance as is often the case in these co-ops). And while the ask of $2.59 million might seem like a lot, a comparable Manhattan residence might easily be twice that much, if not more.
Tour this glamorous parkside pad
November 9, 2015

Noroof Architects Transformed This $1.6M Historic Bed-Stuy Home With Modern Appeal

No matter how lavish, developer and flipper renovations rarely hold a candle to the custom designs executed by architects for their clients' homes–even more so when the architects are the clients and the homes are their own. This unassuming townhouse at 702 Monroe Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, on the market for $1.635 million, is a prime example. In this case, the innovative pair behind architecture firm noroof (they received national recognition for their "Slot House" and specialize in designing small spaces) worked their creative and practical magic on a comparatively compact historic Brooklyn townhouse with a unique front porch and a lot of potential charm. Based on love and respect for the porch as a gathering, sheltering and enhancing element, they've named the resulting project "porchouse," an elegantly-designed home with a clean, modern interior that's perfect for family living–with plenty of curb appeal.
See how the magic happened
October 20, 2015

Clever Room Divider by Jordan Parnass Triples as Queen-Sized Bed and Storage Unit

Living efficiently in a studio apartment definitely requires careful planning, and one of the largest challenges is separating the bedroom from the living area. This custom-fabricated millwork insertion designed by Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture for a Battery Park studio, solves that problem, and a few others as well. In addition to providing the studio with a bedroom divider, the piece also holds additional storage and display shelving.
see more here
October 8, 2015

Long Island City ‘Micro’ Units Will Have Three Bedrooms

To date, the city's biggest and most news-worthy micro housing complex, My Micro NY, has offered only studios, which makes sense considering a micro apartment is typically defined as encompassing less than 350 square feet. But the term "micro" is getting an expansion (figuratively and literally) in Long Island City, where a new rental complex will offer 57 two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 490 to 735 square feet, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project at 37-10 Crescent Street is being developed by Ranger Properties, whose managing principal Sheldon Stein said, "Our concept is we can offer really high-quality public amenity space, and better value with smaller private spaces, and bring the rental cost down."
More details
September 16, 2015

Where I Work: Inside Made in Americana’s Bed-Stuy workshop and collaborative

6sqft’s series “Where I Work” takes us into the studios, offices, and off-beat workspaces of New Yorkers across the city. In this installment, we meet the founders of Brooklyn's Made in Americana. Want to see your business featured here? Get in touch! Many of us come to New York with certain goals in mind, but more often than not we're at the whim of the city which has plans of its own. But this is not always a bad thing. Case in point: When college friends Jordan Johnson and Joey Grimm moved to NYC a few years ago, they wanted to be performance artists; now they're running a burgeoning furniture business called Made in Americana. Today, the pair work out of a massive industrial studio at the border of Hasidic Bed-Stuy and Bed-Stuy Bedford, designing custom interiors and building modern pieces meant to last for generations. But that's not all, they've opened their very large and very well-equipped space to other newbie BK designers to create a collaborative environment that gives others the opportunity to not just get their works made, but refine them with top-of-the-line sustainable materials to get them showroom-ready—with their help, of course. Jump ahead to learn more about what Jordan and Joey are doing, exactly how they got to where they're at, and of course to tour of their quirky, and quite cool, DIY studio space.
Go inside their awesome studio here
June 15, 2015

Send In Your Questions and Get Them Turned Into Stories

Ever wondered how designers work around NYC’s tiny apartments? We’ll get in touch with the space-saving gurus at noroof Architects. Or maybe you want to know about the origins of the city’s street art? We know an artist who was part of the first generation of subway graffiti artists. Or it could be as simple as wanting […]