The 'Swiss Army Knife' Of Studio Apartments Transforms Before Your Eyes

For most, purchasing a 420 square foot studio apartment would lead to cutting back on a few mod-cons of your typical, larger property. But for founder of the eco-blog and vlog TreeHugger.com Graham Hill, its proportions were just big enough a blank canvas to dream big. Transfixed on the idea to incorporate everything you'd expect from modern day living, Hill went about launching a project to design and build an apartment capable of 'transforming' into various different living spaces.

Describing his desire in “[wanting] it all” from his newly-purchased New York City apartment - “home office, sit down dinner for 10, room for guests, and all [his] kite surfing gear” - Hill's studio apartment now completed is the epitome of minimalist-yet-functional living and an extraordinary example of how meticulous planning and intelligent interior design can reap huge rewards in quality of life. Quite literally the Swiss Army knife of apartments, the space has been entirely gutted and remodelled with hide-away rooms, sliding doors, convertible walls and transformable furniture to bring Hill's dream full-circle into reality.

Showing off his newly-converted apartment to Yahoo in an exclusive first-look, the tour demonstrates the flair and nuance in intelligent space-saving techniques that Hill and collaborators have used, and one befitting of the moniker our title denotes. A dining table capable of seating 10 slides out from under the breakfast nook, a full-sized double bed folds out from the wall, and whole sections of the apartment remain stowed away behind moveable units. Even the attention to detail for kitchen appliances and utensils is brilliant; spoons and plastic bowls are fold into one another; fridge, freezer and cooking equipment are all housed in built-in sliding drawers.

Like you might have expected, the refurb didn't come cheap. In total, the apartment – which was designed by Romanian architecture students Catalin Sandu and Adrian Iancu whose “One Size Fits All” design was chosen from over 300 entries submitted to Hill's competition - cost upwards of $300,000 to convert and was built in typical environmentally-friendly fashion with sustainably-sourced lumber and built-in solar powered phone chargers. The LifeEdited Apartment 1 (or LE1 for short) is just the very beginning however; it is hoped such a design will be a template for future LifeEdited-inspired projects, while the company is also “in discussion” to make a multi-story, mixed use building based on LifeEdited principles.

See the tour video below, and visit the LifeEdited site here.

Richard Birkett