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Anyway, I've always wanted to do something like this (below), but there's one little problem- I've never rented, or lived in a loft, or anywhere with ceilings high enough....
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| All photos from READYMADE Magazine |
Anyway, in terms of eye-candy, this ultra-cool apartment was in the most recent issue of Readymade Magazine, and I've found myself flipping to this article (by none other than Mimi Zeiger- who will be speaking at our Relaxshacks.com tiny house/shelter building workshop on July 9th!) over and over again, just to check out these REALLY cool photos. Sparse, Simple, Spacious (in only 800 square feet), and most of all, FUN!
"CAMPING OUT AT HOME"
Terri Chiao has cabin fever. But instead of itching to get out of the house, she equipped her Brooklyn loft with all it needs to ease her malady. The approximately 800-square-foot space is loc-ated within a former textile factory in Bushwick, an industrial neighborhood with a burgeoning art and food scene. It was completely raw and open, and it badly needed two bedrooms to make it livable. Chiao, who graduated from Columbia University in 2008 with an architecture degree, wasn’t content to simply construct square Sheetrock walls. In formulating her cure-all, she turned to two major design influences: Atelier Bow-Wow, a Japanese architecture firm known for tiny houses, and the many weekends she spent as a child in the mountains of North Georgia and Tennessee. The result? Two inspired hut-like hallucinations ready to become reality.
Chiao spent a sweaty summer of 2009 building (with a whole team of friends) the two small spaces within the loft. Each one is outfitted with just enough storage and privacy for one person. “The nice thing about building a house for yourself is that it really is a house for yourself,” she says. Her room, an 88-square-foot cabin, is an iconic pitched-roof shelter made out of luan plywood and standard lumber. Though spartan—it fits little more than a double bed—there are picturesque windows to capture the southeastern light that floods the loft during the day. Her roommate sleeps in a 100-square-foot plywood “treehouse” raised 6 feet off the floor to accommodate a study and storage area underneath.
In between the two structures, a shared living room is filled with books and plants. Chiao uses the 12-foot-tall shared space for casual dinner parties, movie nights, and artist salons. “I like feeling connected to the weather, and, in this space, the sun and the sky can be experienced directly at all times through the big windows—so sometimes it does feel a little bit like I’m living outdoors,” she explains. “Maybe as close as I can get to doing that comfortably in New York City, anyway.” And the loft, and its occupants, are so much better off for it.
MORE INFO and HOW-TO at
http://www.readymade.com/magazine/article/camping_out_at_home
-Derek "Deek" Diedricksen (via (article and photos) www.readymade.com )
