Apartment Choice

One of the biggest downsides to studio living is feeling like you live — and entertain — in your bedroom. But even though that might physically/technically be true, it doesn't mean you can't use design to make it feel like it's more than just a studio. These smart and stylish studios — all under 500 square feet — employ three of the most successful ways to make a studio apartment feel bigger than it is. And they're design tips that anyone can use (whether you have more than one room or not!) to make any room feel better. Choose double duty furniture Alee Ruggieri's 200 square foot Greenwich Village studio Alee's studio apartment is successful thanks to the powers of double- duty furniture . In the morning, her bed transforms into what looks like a sofa by a simple rearrangement of throw pillows. Placing it with a long edge against a wall (like you would a sofa), helps the illusion. Arranging the rest of the home's furniture around the bed/sofa makes he...

Share This: Modern Studio Apartment %20-%20http://www.yliving.com/blog/decorate-modern-studio-apartment/" target="_blank"> Modern Studio Apartment %7C%20YLiving" target="_blank"> The stakes are high when decorating a modern studio apartment . After all, when every function needs to happen in a single, compact space—from sleeping to cooking to entertaining—even one poorly placed or scaled piece of furniture can throw off the balance of your modern living room or modern dining room . To avoid common missteps we called on Iain Halliday, of the New York- and Sydney-based architectural and interior design firm Burley Katon Halliday . A veteran designer who has detailed everything from studios to vast homes, Halliday offers modern living room ideas for smart small-space design. YLiving: What are the major challenges when decorating a studio apartment, and how can they be addressed? Iain Halliday: It’s important to understand that in a studio many thin...

We’re pleased to share the prelude, titled Freundschaft, of Kristen Ghodsee’s upcoming book Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. In Red Hangover Ghodsee reflects on the lived experience of postsocialism and how many ordinary men and women across Eastern Europe suffered from the massive social and economic upheavals in their lives after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This text is not final, but we hope it gives you a taste of this impactful new book, to be published in late October. Two pairs of earrings, four bracelets, and a mixtape inspired me to write this book. I was in the Stadtmuseum in the German city of Jena, peering into the various display cases of an exhibit called Freundschaft! Mythos und Realit ät im Alltag der DDR (Friendship! Myth and reality in everyday life in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]). The exhibit ruminated on the official and unofficial uses of the word “friendship” in the context of communist East Germany between 1949 and 1989. In one c...