Third-grade teacher Eric Schneider recently made a $154,000 profit off of selling his teeny 450-square foot apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
For that price, he could have bought himself an entire house, but the location was unbeatable.
Location combined with the apartment’s origami-like design that creates four rooms made it desirable in NYC’s real estate market.
Schneider first purchased his tiny pad in 2005 for $235,000 and hired architects Michael Chen and Kari Anderson of Normal Projects to completely redesign the space for another $70,000.
It recently sold, according to the Sotheby’s website for $459,000.
“It was basically an open rectangular space,” Schneider told Fair Companies. “There wasn’t much to it, there was just a couple of old closets, an old corner kitchen and that was it.'”
Chen explains that he and Anderson really had their work cut out for them.
“Initially we were looking at different ways we could subdivide the spaces into smaller spaces,” he said, “But pretty quickly it became clear that there wasn’t really enough room to get like a real bedroom in here and if you did then there wasn’t really room to have a real living room area and Eric is a pretty serious cook and so a tiny little kitchen wouldn’t really work for him.”
They had to get creative and came up with a design for a large blue, well basically it’s a cabinet that hides the apartment’s walls, bed, desk, shelving, and closets.
The key to this space is overlap.
The spaces aren’t separate but sort of flow into one another with the illusion of separation.
There’s a good sized kitchen with a sink, stove, and a countertop to sit at. The kitchen cabinets hide a microwave and refrigerator and have room for glassware, dry good storage, and plates, etc.
When the cabinet is tucked in, there is a living room space that includes a bookshelf. The cushions on the living room couch can be removed and serve as a single bed.
When the cabinet is pulled out, it reveals a partition that separates the living room from the “bedroom” where a Murhpy’s bed folds out. It also has a built-in nightstand that includes lighting.
A panel folds out from the back side of the partition on the living room side and serves as a desk when the partition is opened or bar area when it is closed.
The cabinet is chock full of storage for clothing, linens and other items.
Normal Projects refers to the space as the Unfolding Apartment while Schneider, who spent his first year post-college in Japan, refers to it as the Origami Apartment.
“It’s partly partitioning the space, it’s partly making its interior available and its partly also creating lots of different areas of overlap where you get like a living area and a bed area and a dining area and a lounge area and they’re not necessarily separate but they’re sort of leaking into one another in a way.”
You can check out a tour of the home in the video below.
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