Smaller Footprint Living Through Flexible Apartment Spaces

Design - by Open Journal

Abbie Freestone is the Editor of Affix Magazine, an independent start-up publication orientated around urban design, planning, culture & people. Abbie has shared her recent piece on flexible apartment spaces with Open Journal and is reproduced here with her permission:

With new trends emerging from the dynamic lifestyles led by 21st century societies into smaller living spaces and apartment sizes, we are beginning to see innovative design strategies helping to make these environments efficient spaces, whilst maintaining their desirable, residential functionality. The desirability of these smaller dwellings is often found by those leading busy lifestyles and for temporary living spaces. Nonetheless, these studio style apartments are resulting in creative interpretations in regards to just how they can be designed and used by those who occupy them.

Interior design is playing an immense role in rethinking and reimagining the conventional approach to apartment living. Through integrating kitchens in a concealed and seamless manner, it not only establishes a stylish and high-end interior, yet it allows for more space to be opened up and for movement to flow through that space with ease. Interior architects are now designing approaches and developing more ways to make these spaces flexible with slide-able/moveable walls, fold-up bed contraptions and hidden storage compartments. So much so that we see a single room transforming into multiple different kinds of spaces depending on the time of day and the type of function that its user so desires. Bedrooms become kitchens and then yoga rooms, followed by living rooms, then entertaining spaces and the cycle goes on and so forth. To be amazed at just how creative designers can be with these kinds of flexible spaces, look no further than Youtube for a collection of videos and animations demonstrating changeable spaces.

The ‘Micro-Apartment’ or otherwise known as the ‘Pop Up Interactive Apartment’ designed by the ‘Hyperbody’ design team (a collective of TU Delft University students), allows apartment spaces to transform at the push of a button. The concept was inspired by the fact that a single person living within an apartment can only really be in any one space at any one moment in time. Why then have empty rooms wasted, when they could potentially be created as they were required? The forward-thinking design sees walls that slide along grooves or tracks in the floor, which could potentially be powered by a motor concealed under the floorboards. This initiative is but one example of the way in which contemporary interior architects and designers are helping to reconceptualise the way we think about space and how we occupy it.