No, this is not self-referencing.
It’s not a secret that suburban living isn’t something in which I take an interest. I leave that to people eminently more qualified (and who like it a LOT more than me.) People start talking about housing developments and McMansions and whatever and my eyes glaze over. It’s like that bit in the Simpsons where you see into Homer’s head and there’s that little monkey toy playing the cymbals.
But me? I’m a city kid. Born in Manhattan, and raised in the Bronx. Gimme concrete and glass and the smell of rain on asphalt.
One thing urban environments have in common (and by this I mean real ones- not places like Los Angeles which are a whole bunch of suburbs strung together.) are that they have a shortage of space. People have to economize on room, because square footage is expensive. Fortunately for me, this restriction on room brings out one of my favorite qualities of design- economy, or tightness. It brings out the pragmatist in designers and I am at the very head of the pragmatist line.
Yesterday, I got treated to three fantastic examples of this kind of thing in my rss reader.
From 2modern, there’s this:
How. Cool. Is. This. It’s a portable office. Hell, it’s a portable craft station. Think about taking this with you to a show! You just open, set up a work environment, and you work from wherever you are. As much as people might bitch about the $1900 price tag, this is actually pretty reasonable. Think about students who are moving into an apartment with housemates. Just close it up, lock it and walk away. It’s portable, if you have to move. It’s FANTASTIC.
Look! It even has the little hole in the tabletop for cables already cut out. AWESOMESAUCE.
But wait! There’s more!
I know, I know. So what. It’s a box. But what’s IN the box, boys and girls?
It’s a whole room. There’s a video that goes along with this, that shows you can set the thing up in seven minutes if you know what you’re doing. How’s THAT for tight? and when you need to move? Just back it all up back in the box. I’m not saying this is perfect for everyone, but if you’re short on space, or are only going to be somewhere temporarily, so far it seems you’ve got both a completely portable bedroom and an office set up right here, for less than the cost (by a lot) of furnishing a whole apartment, for sure.
What’s that? But you still need to eat? Oh okay. For that we move to momeld, who brings us this, courtesy of designer Fevzi Karaman:
Think about what you could do with all three. How much living you could do in such a small space (granted, the bed is probably not great for more than a temporary situation, or as a guest bed/couch) but you have most of an entire studio apartment here. Tight, multifunctional, pragmatic, clean design.
See? Good things. Small packages. Wow, this is great stuff.
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Damned Good Design 
I really love that last item… Fantastic!
Casulo – WOW. That kicks some SERIOUS ass – assuming you can get it up stairs/elevators and around hallway corners and into the room in the first place. Amazing
Office in a box – if only they had displayed it with a chair that would fit inside. And I’m curious about their plans for preventing stuff from the left slide all ending up on the right in transit…
Kitchen – again the chairs are my issue. Even with it closed, the chairs are still sitting there kind of in the way, taking up almost as much space as the extended counter, and they really wouldn’t take up more space if you left them tucked in. Perhaps something akin to a director’s chair that folded up and stored hooked to the end of the counter would make more sense to me, or chairs you could switch from “dining” to “living”. But the counter looks too high for the chairs to be used as standard seating in most living room arrangements. Really curious about the sink faucet, though. And it’d be great set for places like Germany where you’re expected to bring your kitchen sink with you.
[…] Scoot on over the read about the other space-saving devices in Damned Cool’s article. […]