Table of contents for 11/1/2016 in Dwell

“ Whether it’s incessant emails, texts, or social media updates, our overly packed schedules or the many hundreds of things we own, life can be overwhelming. I believe we intuitively desire simpler lives filled with high-quality experiences, relationships, and possessions.” — GRAHAM HILL, RESIDENT What we love about this quote is how Hill, whose 350-square-foot abode in New York appears on our cover and on page 58, addresses over-saturation. We tend to think of micro-dwelling as a reaction against a housing market that, nearly a decade after the mortgage crisis, still says bigger is better. (The median-size American single-family home was larger than ever last year, at 2,467 square feet.) But rather, it’s a movement to streamline our existences, both materially and spiritually. Cleaning out unwanted detritus gives us control…

@tomfaction1: Brilliant idea from @dwell, transforming themselves into a new social platform—great potential for others @MUDEO The new @dwell, built on content and community, is looking better than ever—kudos @dmcgorry: Digging the new @dwell site. White space and all that good stuff. @TwoPaddles: We are still getting accustomed to @dwell new website format but it’s clearly a great way to connect and discover @desireegruber: “Why have we yet to see a house built around a computer, rather than a few computers put into a house?” —@davemorin via @dwell @aaannelisesmith: Loving @dwell’s concept: “make design a daily habit”…

Getting a pocketknife is a rite of passage few kids forget. Los Angeles designer Stephen Kenn remembers his first: “When I was twelve, my dad let me pick out a small Swiss Army Knife,” he recalls. “I loved the sleek motion of the blades being pulled out, and the hidden tweezers and toothpick.” Kenn reunited with those memories earlier this year when Victorinox, maker of the original little red Swiss Army Knife, invited him to do a capsule collection of furniture in the tradition of their world-famous all-in-one widget. Featuring cleverly concealed hardware, the three pieces he designed— a chair that flips into a stepladder, a height-adjustable table/desk, and a swiveling storage unit—are capable of more than their compact forms suggest. Like Victorinox’s 119-year-old knife, they’re precise, economical, and, for…

PROJECT Chelsea Loft ARCHITECT Frame Design Lab LOCATION New York, New York Chelsea Loft Plan A Entrance B Den C Living Room D Dining Area E Kitchen F Pantry G Laundry H The Cube I Closet J Bedroom K Master Bedroom L Master Closet M Master Bathroom N Bathroom In cramped New York apartments, it’s not an uncommon requirement for spaces to serve a multitude of functions. To make one 2,000-square-foot loft more efficient, Frame Design Lab came up with a novel solution that does just that within a very tight footprint. They call it the Cube, a 60-square-foot structure that organizes the larger space by dividing it into a more conventional floor plan. Formerly one large open area with two bedrooms at one end, the interior is now…

For those who often pull up stakes, personal belongings, not walls, make a home. And how easily those possessions can be packed and ferried to their next nest is the yardstick by which they’re judged. Inspired by her own peripatetic lifestyle, Argentine architect and designer Natalia Geci created LYNKO, a travel-ready storage prototype that can be customized by adding hooks, mirrors, hangers, pockets, and more. Because it assembles without screws, stands on its own, and fits in the back of most cars, Geci likens her invention, for which she is seeking a manufacturer, to an indoor tent. Unlike many campsites, though, when it’s time to depart, LYNKO takes just five minutes to break down.…

Olle Lundberg, Design Principal Lundberg Design is a San Francisco-based practice that strives to create elegant, simple solutions. They believe in making architecture collaborative and describe their style as “nature-inspired modernism.” Olle Lundberg and his team strive to create design that’s personal, unique, and surprising. When working with his clients, he aims to build something that defines them as individuals. Dwell.com has given him a place where he can tell the story behind his projects in his own voice—making them even more personal. It’s given him a chance to experience good design from the community while also being able to share his own inspiration. How do you Dwell? Share your voice and create a profile on dwell.com…

A 300-squarefoot studio in SF’s Dogpatch: 2 humans, 2 dogs, 3 fish, and a snail. @carlitos_mister / Posted to Instagram My flat in London. It was under 200 square feet. Had to blow-dry my hair in the kitchen, which doubled as my study. @elcielle / Posted to Instagram My parents and I lived on a 33-footlong sailboat my senior year in high school. It was definitely an experience for a teen girl to try to maintain a typical lifestyle while living on a sailboat. I now have a compulsion to build storage under all furniture. America Milonguera / Posted to Facebook I spent a year traversing Australia in a 1950 vintage Bondwood caravan that measured 12 by 6 feet. Cheyenne Morrison / Posted to Facebook Fresh out of college, I…

PROJECT Cherniawsky Garden LOCATION Los Angeles, California Like any dedicated do-it-yourselfers, Carmen and Todd Cherniawsky have had their share of missteps and successes. Alone or with the help of contractors, they’ve whitewashed floors, redone a bathroom, and gutted the kitchen of their 700-square-foot home in the Hollywood Hills. But it was a near-disaster that paved the way for the modern garden that is their property’s undisputed star. Todd, an art director and production designer for such films as Avatar, Oz the Great and Powerful, and The BFG, and Carmen, a hairstylist and avid dressage rider, had rented the 1924 house for several years before buying it. They loved the convenience of living small, but they knew they had work to do. Atop their wish list was improved access to the…

PROJECT Upper West Side APARTMENT ARCHITECT STADT Architecture LOCATION New York, New York An affordable Manhattan triplex might seem the stuff of real estate fantasy. That’s why attorney René Roupinian jumped on the apartment she now calls home when she first saw it in the midaughts— despite the fact that the square footage of its three combined levels was less than that of some studios. “It was so different from anything I had seen. It felt really spacious because of the high ceilings, and it had exposed brick on both sides,” René recalls. “I just said, ‘Oh my god, I love this apartment.’” But after nearly a decade of living in the 580-square-foot space, located in a late 19th–century building on New York’s Upper West Side, René decided to give…

Project Blackpool House Architect Glamuzina Architects Location Waiheke Island, New Zealand Waiheke Island, a small, beach-lined domain with its own warm microclimate, has long been a “runaway place where people from Auckland can hunker down and escape civilization,” says Mark Summerville, one of the island’s vacationers. But, as has become the case in many a beautiful place close to a city, the area has changed in recent years, as visitors swap humble seaside cabins for getaways that wrap up the benefits of beach living in sprawling packages with all the modern conveniences included. Rejecting this trend, the modest holiday house that Mark shares with his partner, Milton Henry, stands amid the island’s tree canopy like a metal-clad sentinel watching over the forest. Lots on the island are almost all sloped,…

PROJECT Minimal House ARCHITECT Studio d’ARC LOCATION Lake City, Pennsylvania One hot summer night in 2012, Gerard Damiani and Debbie Battistone, the husband-and-wife team behind Pittsburgh’s studio d’ARC, took themselves out and, over margaritas, decided to buy a weekend home. They had just one sticking point: price. “I want cheap,” Damiani told his wife. She spent the rest of the evening scouring local Erie real estate websites to see if waterfront properties existed for around $25,000. She found exactly one, a 1950s fisherman’s cottage in a tranquil beach resort community within Lake City, two hours north of Pittsburgh. The house was ideally situated on Lake Erie but was in total disrepair, its mint-green concrete walls cracking and sagging into the earth. Inside were two tiny, claustrophobic bedrooms with only seven-foothigh…

LETTERS Two of the inventions featured in “Smart Cities” in the July/August 2016 edition are so absurd, I worry for our future. The Sponge Suit claims to extract contaminants from the water and store them in close proximity to breasts—organs that are highly susceptible to cancers triggered by environmental toxins. The Worldbeing device touts its authority to guilt its wearer into carbon footprint paralysis, all the while served on a useless pedestal that is destined for the landfill. The dangerous qualities of these prototypes are not consistent with the innovative and environmentally conscientious values worthy of the Dwell brand. Julie Murray Austin, Texas Editor’s Note: We included the Worldbeing and Sponge Suit prototypes in our selection of wearable technology because they represent emerging ideas about how society is going to…

Ann Binlot Born and raised in the Bay Area, Brooklyn-based freelance writer Ann Binlot reports on art, fashion, architecture, design, travel, and food for publications like The New York Times, Monocle, Wallpaper*, and Architectural Digest. In this issue, she writes about the 580-square-foot New York apartment that STADT Architecture founder Christopher Kitterman redesigned for attorney René Roupinian (page 46). “I loved the way the customized storage on each level was able to hide all of René’s things and make the triplex look so neat and clean,” Binlot says. What type of small space would you most like to live in? “A bungalow in Venice Beach.” John Cary Writer and TED strategist John Cary is the author of The Power of Pro Bono and a forthcoming book on the dignifying power…

Sixteen years after the launch of Dwell, designers Chris Deam and Nick Dine, partners in the San Francisco and New York–based firm Deam + Dine, have teamed up to embody the brand’s ethos with Modern by Dwell Magazine—a new home collection for Target that debuts December 27. “The overall concept was to give physical form to the editorial voice of Dwell,” says Deam, who alongside his wife, Dwell founder Lara Hedberg Deam, has played a guiding role in the magazine’s creative vision since the beginning. “This is a quiet collection that celebrates smart, fresh, and purposeful design that is approachable. This isn’t fanciful stuff; for us, beauty comes from utility.” With more than 120 products, the collection will focus on three key areas: entertaining, interiors, and outdoor furnishings. Some pieces,…

PROJECT Foley Ridge Cabin ARCHITECT onSITE Architecture LOCATION Stuart, Virginia Newly married and expecting a child, Lauren and Josh Stegall initially talked of supplementing Josh’s bachelor pad— a one-room cabin deep in the woods of Stuart, Virginia—with a double-wide trailer. The couple, who own and operate a small pest-control business, were desperate for more room, and a mobile home seemed like the path of least resistance. But it didn’t sit well with Josh: “I wanted space to be proud of, an investment,” he recalls. On a whim, Josh reached out to Keith Zawistowski, a classmate from the boarding school he’d attended as a teen. Josh had noticed on Facebook that Keith had become an architect, and Josh hoped he might be able to help. Keith is one half of the…

PROJECT Bleecker Street Apartment ARCHITECT Krajewski Architect LOCATION New York, New York An alumnus of Richard Meier’s studio, Matt Krajewski had recently begun his own practice when he was commissioned to transform a ruin of a 390-square-foot Manhattan apartment. Avoiding the anxiety of influence that might have plagued another Meiertrained architect, Krajewski embraced his longtime mentor’s signature bright white minimalism. Recasting the legendary designer’s “superstyle” in a fashion of his own, Krajewski flipped the tiny interior into a space-defying home—all on a budget of $130,000. Krajewski’s clients, a couple from Europe who are executives at a French cosmetics company, had worked with him before on renovating a town house in Jersey City. The owner and his wife, who hail from France and England, respectively, had been debating whether or…

Cover Guerin Glass Architects and Composite Fabrication and Construction gueringlass.com LifeEdited lifeedited.com Passo table and Penelope queen bed/sofa by Clei, both from Resource Furniture resourcefurniture.com Drop Hat pendants by Plumen usshop.plumen.com 29 Clean Cut Storage column, Stepladder chair, and Convertible table, all by Stephen Kenn for Victorinox stephenkenn.com 32 A Garden Tale General contracting by Steven Blake stevenblakeconstruction.com Hardscaping materials from Bourget Bros. bourgetbros.com Wicker sectional from Target target.com Dining table and benches by Jensen Jarrah from Universal Patio Furniture unifurn.com Radial chandelier by Ceci Thompson for CB2 cb2.com Solar globe lights from Crate and Barrel crateandbarrel.com Shade sails by Sunbrella sunbrella.com Kenmore grill from Home Depot homedepot.com Firepit and umbrellas, both residents’ own design 36 Modern for All LED Task Lamp, Lounge Chair, and Side Table, all from Modern…