Gary chang domestic transformer apartment

On a budget in a big city, how do you work 350 square feet of apartment space into luxury living quarters? Using a series of amazing space-saving strategies and mobile architectural elements, Gary Chang converted his simple apartment-turned-condominium into a vast and varied place filled with twenty-one distinct, unique, useful and luxurious spaces.

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Gary Chang pull out apartment transforming
Gary Chang micro apartment transforming

This fascinating experiment with transforming interior spaces includes a steam room, home cinema and many other high-end amenities not found in most living spaces of comparable seize. A series of sliding walls contain spaces within them but also hide drawers, shelves and other useful storage places for DVDs, CDs and other objects that normally displace interior space. In short: they define space as walls but also double as doors and dividers.

Gary Chang micro apartment hammock

Fold-down desks and other fold-out design elements are another essential part of his space-saving strategy, converting empty space into seating, surfaces and beds as needed. Instead of using valuable wall space for his big-screen TV, the designer put the moving screen over an existing window to give that limited square footage a dual purpose. Originally a cramped rental unit shared by Chang and his parents, he has since purchased this property in order to develop it into a transforming dream home.

From The New York Times:

“MR. CHANG’S experiment in flexible living began in 1988, when his family moved into a bigger apartment a few blocks away, with his grandparents and uncles.”

“Mr. Chang was then working for the P&T Group, an architectural firm, and living in a rented room near the University of Hong Kong, where he had studied architecture. His mother suggested that he take over the lease on their old apartment, ‘because the rent was unusually low,’  he said. Instead he bought it, for about $45,000.”

“He had been itching to tear down the walls since his teenage years, when he sketched new designs for the family home, and he then began in earnest. In the last two decades, he has renovated four times, on progressively bigger budgets as his company, Edge Design Institute, has grown. His latest effort, which took a year and cost just over $218,000, he calls the ‘Domestic Transformer.'”