I generally think of tiny homes (under 500 square feet) as inherently ecofrugal. After all, a house with fewer square feet naturally costs less to build (or buy), less to furnish, less to heat and cool, and less to maintain than a bigger one, and it takes less time to clean. But a recent story in the New York Times caused me to question that view.
I initially clicked on this piece about a 450-square-foot studio in Manhattan hoping to see what sorts of clever design tricks the homeowner had used to make the most of the space. But not only did the apartment not look at all spacious to me, the price tag on it literally made my jaw drop. The owner, Michael Ingram Jones, paid an eye-popping $799,000 for this tiny apartment because it met his very particular requirements: it was in the West Village, and it was in a prewar building constructed by architecture firm Bing & Bing. Now, you would assume that, if he was willing to pay that much to live in a Bing & Bing building, it must have been because he loved the look of their homes—but apparently that was not the case. He loved the view, but he thought the freshly renovated apartment's layout "was inefficient and wasted space." So the first thing he did was spend another $300,000 to have high-priced architecture firm Messana O'Rorke redo the place from top to bottom.
And what did they do for that exorbitant price tag? They divided up this tiny space into a series of even tinier spaces by enclosing the bed in a huge black box (oh, excuse me, I meant "deep aubergine-gray") in the middle of the room. The architect claims this "creates an object in space, as well as sequences of spaces that can actually make a small apartment feel larger," but based on the photos, it certainly doesn't look larger. It looks like there's a huge block of unused space right smack in the middle of the room, and much of the remaining space is devoted to narrow, dark little corridors for getting around that obstruction. And when the doors to this "bedroom" are opened, all they reveal is a dark enclosure containing a queen-size bed and literally nothing else.
I was equally unimpressed by Messana's "great" bathroom and kitchen. The kitchen cabinets are done in a dark wood with no handles, and the tiny counter and backsplash are in a no-doubt-pricey black granite. The photo caption claims this design creates "visual calm," but what it looks like to me is a tiny, dark, featureless hole. The bathroom, decked out with even-more-pricey white Carrara marble on all horizontal surfaces, has more light, but it's still flat and bare-looking. The vibe it gives off is "expensive hotel," not "home reflecting the owner's personality." The other "rooms" in the apartment, the sitting area and desk nook, have more character, thanks to the owner's collection of nice furniture and art pieces. But they're so tiny that everything just feels crammed in.
In short, this little apartment might just be the least ecofrugal home I've ever seen. Between the purchase price and the remodeling costs, the owner paid a whopping $2,444 per square foot for it, and he ended up with a space that feels dark, poky, and cramped. For clever use of space, Brian and I agreed, this high-end home has nothing on the model apartments at IKEA, which could be replicated for a tiny fraction of the price.
This extravagant and unappealing remodel was so exactly the opposite of what I'd hoped for that I decided to go hunting online for a small-space design that was closer to my ecofrugal ideals. I typed "450 square food apartment" into the search bar and clicked on the first hit, from Apartment Therapy. And the minute I saw the first picture, I felt much more cheerful.
Although this Brooklyn apartment has exactly the same square footage as the one featured in the Times, the contrast between the two could hardly be greater. Where one is dark and confined, the other is bright and open. The first one feels like barely enough space for one person, while the second houses two people and a cat comfortably. It has all the same spaces—seating area, dining area, bedroom, kitchen, bath, office—but all of them are in one big room. And while 450 square feet is small for an apartment, it's very large for a single room, making every part of the apartment feel much more spacious.
Even when you focus on the individual "rooms" within the studio, they feel much bigger and brighter than the tiny roomlets in the Manhattan studio. The kitchen is a real kitchen, with a full-sized stove, sink, and fridge, plus a dishwasher—amenities there clearly isn't room for in the Jones kitchen. Counter space looks limited until you realize that the couple's butcher-block dining table (a family heirloom) is counter-height and can do double duty as a roomy island for food prep. And when the meal is ready, the table can comfortably seat four people, while the tiny table in Jones's "dining area" barely has room for a single plate. Jones said he didn't care about space since he considered the city itself to be his "living room," and presumably, if he wants to entertain guests, he takes them out on the town. But the Brooklyn couple (Eva Medoff and Delaney Rohan) have plenty of room to cook and serve dinner for four or, with a bit of squeezing, even six people if they choose. And after dinner, they still have the entire city at their disposal.
Likewise, the bathroom, though small, feels warm and welcoming, with wood and copper accents, a bit of art, and a shower curtain "so soft it feels like a blanket," rather than a uniform expanse of cold marble. The desk faces a large bookshelf crammed with books and a few family photos, as opposed to the handful of books stacked on two tiny shelves above Jones's desk. And the bed, rather than being hidden away in a big dark box, has its head tucked into a little niche in the corner, next to a sunny window from which the cat likes to look out on the street. This does leave it visible from most parts of the room, which might not be to everyone's taste, but the little corner wall creates enough separation to make it feel like a room of its own. And if they ever feel uncomfortable having it visible while people are over, they could always block it off with a translucent screen or curtain.
Since Medoff and Rohan are renters, they didn't do any actual remodeling on this space. However, their "dream landlord" has allowed them to make lots of cosmetic changes—all of which they did themselves on a budget, not with the help of a high-priced design firm. They redesigned their "cookie-cutter" kitchen by painting the cabinets a dark bluish-grey and adding copper handles, and they covered the laminate countertops with butcher-block contact paper (a trick I once used myself in my little apartment in Princeton). The result, to my eye, looks much more elegant than the flat, dark wood and granite kitchen surfaces Jones paid a bundle for. They used the same color scheme in the bathroom, and they picked up on the copper theme throughout the apartment with a shower rod, towel racks, pot racks, and light fixtures made from copper pipe. (All these pieces were DIYed by Rohan. Medoff says her number-one decorating tip is "marrying (or co-habitating, or befriending) someone with secret carpentry skills.")
The only thing I found disappointing about the Apartment Therapy article is that it said nothing about how much this frugal design cost. There isn't a single dollar figure anywhere in the piece, either for the rent or for the renovations, so there's no way to draw a direct comparison between Medoff's and Rohan's total budget and Jones's. However, it's evident that this DIY decor job, using paint and off-the-shelf copper pipe, was much cheaper than the one done by Messana O'Rorke. Since the couple simply changed the appearance of existing elements rather than ripping them out and replacing them with brand-new hardwoods and stone, it was clearly much greener, too. The rent Medoff and Rohan are paying in trendy Williamsburg would no doubt look high to anyone who lives outside the Big Apple, but the total amount they've spent on the place has still got to be a fraction of what Jones paid for his. And their DIYed space is both elegant and cozy, filled with elements that show their personality.
Of course, I suppose Jones's high-end space is a reflection of his personality too. I mean, it must be, or he wouldn't have paid such a bundle for it. But living in a shoebox-sized showroom wouldn't be to my taste, nor, I suspect, to most people's. If I ever somehow found myself in Jones's apartment, I'd no doubt find it very uncomfortable, but in the Brooklyn apartment, I'd pull up a stool and make myself right at home.
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