Most Amazing Tiny Homes

 

This 78-square-foot living space may be one of the smallest apartments you will ever see. Located in the midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen, it's the home and office of architect Luke Clark Tyler.

 

Tyler, a graduate of Cornell University, actually lived in a 96-square-foot space previously and decided to downsize even further by moving to this apartment. To make it livable, Tyler designed and hand-built his own transformer furniture out of plywood and 2x4's to make the most out of what might have been a tight space.

 

It's barely wider than a hallway, but thanks to the high ceilings and thoughtful design and conscious lifestyle changes, Tyler is able to gain in savings: he pays $800 a month in rent -- cheaper than the shared housing in the same area. In addition, rather than purchasing expensive furniture, his customized build-out only cost him $170 at Home Depot.

 

When Christian Schallert isn't cooking, dressing, sleeping or eating, his 24-square-meter (258 square feet) apartment is an empty cube. To use a piece of furniture, he has to build it. To sleep, he rolls his bed out from under the balcony, his stairs become bedside tables and he can even swing his TV out from the wall. 

To dine, he lowers a plank from the wall, his flower stand becomes a support and his stairs become a bench. To cook, he clicks a spot on his vast wall of clickable furniture, and a spring-loaded door swings up to reveal an instant kitchen with double-burner, dishwasher, sink, countertop and microwave oven. The full-sized refrigerator and freezer click open alongside the other appliances.

Located in Barcelona's hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Christian, a Barcelona-based photographer, says its design was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home. While there's undoubtedly more work involved in constructing and deconstructing your dining room/kitchen/bedroom every day or meal, Christian claims that it helps keep him in shape.

Check the video below to see Christian showing his amazing LEGO-style home.

 

Who says you need a big house with an expansive yard to achieve the American Dream these days? One Washington State resident has found her perfect home in the 140 square feet of living space she's built herself. Located in Snohomish, WA, Apartment Therapy reader Melissa submitted her teensy abode as part of the site's Small Cool 2013 contest.

 

It's a basic bungalow-style house with an elevated sleeping loft over the kitchen. The wood slat construction gives the home a rustic feel, which is nicely countered by the super-sized flat screen in the living room. 

 

Not many couples could live in complete harmony in a space that the New York Post calls the “smallest apartment in the city,” but Zaarath and Christopher Prokop — with their two cats — live in a 175-square-foot “microstudio” in Manhattan's Morningside Heights.

 

Purchased for $150,000 three months ago, the co-op is 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide and is on the 16th floor of a building on 110th Street. But, get this — it's only accessible by a staircase from the 15th floor. The couple has:

 

• A queen-size bed (about 1/3 of their living space)
• Mini-fridge and hot plate (they don't eat in very often)
• One kitchen appliance (a cappuccino maker)
• Closet-sized bathroom with shower with sink and toilet (no long, luxurious baths here)
• Kitchen cabinets that are used for their clothing (they don't eat here, remember?)
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With a space this small, they jog to work, picking up their clothes along the way at various dry cleaners around the city and some clothes are kept in their offices.

 

The Prokops plan to pay off their mortgage in two years and then plan to remodel by installing a Murphy bed and larger windows. Their only cost at that point will be a maintenance fee of $700 a month.

 

This article is all about pretty tiny apartments, but we were absolutely blown away when we came across New Yorker Felice Cohen's itty bitty, teensy weensy, 90 sq. ft. studio on the Upper West Side. The 12 by 7 foot apartment definitely isn't for the claustrophobic, but we think Ms. Cohen managed to live there in high style. Plus, if you consider that she only used to pay $700 a month for her miniature pad (in a neighborhood where monthly rents average about $3,600), you can see how her decision allowed her to live large in other ways.

 

After 5 years, she finally saved enough money to move to an apartment five times bigger. 

 

Polish architect Jakub Szczesny claims to have built the world's narrowest house, just 122 centimeters across at its widest point. The Keret House is squeezed into a crevice between two buildings in the center of Warsaw and will provide a temporary home for travelling writers.

 

Szczesny, who is one of the co-founders of the arts group Centrala, approached Israeli writer Etgar Keret to get involved in the project and the pair started developing a triangular house with just enough space for a single inhabitant to live and work.

 

The body of the house is raised up on stilts and a staircase leads inside from underneath. At its narrowest point the house is no more than 72 centimeters wide.

 

How do you make a tiny New York City apartment into a livable 240-square foot space with a sleeping loft? You enlist the help of Brooklyn architect Tim Seggerman, who renovated this Upper West Side brownstone studio into what it is today.

 

The space was in poor shape to begin with, so they incorporated blond woods to build the interior out, including the loft over the kitchen. A nook creates a cubby-like library to crawl into.

 

Can you believe they were able to fit a washing machine in there?! 

 

Airplane interiors engineer for Boeing, Steve Sauer combined custom furniture from Ikea and West Elm to get the most out of his 182-square-foot home. Inspired by boats, Sauer's tiny Seattle home is pretty remarkable. 
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Form Follows Function, Maybe!

Gotto love the cheeky tagline of the 3F Concept Vacuum Cleaner, it says ‘Form Follows Function.’ Given that Yanko Design believes that ‘Form Beyond Function’, the debate surrounding this vacuum’s form and function, can get quite heated! To tie it up for you, the Triple”F” is a cleaner that it cleans, disinfects and freshens the air in your home. The inspiration for this vacuum comes from ballet dancing: while at work it resembles a skirt, floating gracefully over your floor. Thanks to the different built-in filters, you can interchange the scented filters to get the aroma of your choice. Features: When the vacuum is OFF, it stands erect to avoid wastage of space in compact apartments. When it is ON, it extends its base to gain better stability and a wider working surface. The 3F cleaner is fully autonomous and can even reach its charging base on its own. It can be controlled via smartphones and tablets, so that the user can ensure cleanliness remotely. Designer: Germain Verbrackel -

Lil’bitty Light Sensor

Access to a good light meter can make or a break a photo, but the designs are often bulky, archaic in user-friendliness, and expensive. The Lumu light meter is reduced to the size of the round sensor, eliminating the need for a separate handheld device. Instead, it works with your smartphone using a dedicated app for taking luminance measurements with a spectral response sensor that works like the human eye. Why not, since you already have your phone with you?! There is no darkness too dark and no light too bright which Lumu can’t measure!  It’s not just about getting your measurement right… Lumu’s app enables the light meter to use all the cool features smartphones already have. By saving it to a cloud you are able to track your progress. Save all the data about the moment you shoot, including: location, voice record, note, picture, photo parameters, and many more. The app is made to support your creative process, not to stand in your way. Designer: Lumu Labs Manufacturing Lumu from Lumu Meter on Vimeo. -

Plants For Naturally Clean Air

Air Drop, is a concept that dwells on providing purified air in an urban landscape. The idea is to use Air plants or Tillandsias, which are the most effective plants for absorbing gaseous pollutants in the air. Crafted to look elegant planters that are hung from the ceiling, the Air Drop is a solar powered air filtration system uses sunlight to sustain itself. 2013 Electrolux Design Lab semi-finalists Jillian explains, “The idea behind the Air Drop is to allow for more space in smaller city apartments, as well as provide its user with the cleanest air possible using two filtration methods.” The first method uses a typical filter to reduce actual particles that exist in the air. These particles come from items like candles and pets. The second method of filtration is the growth of air plants. Air plants are plants that can thrive with only sunlight and air. An air plant is more effective than a typical plant, which uses soil because the soil can harbor dust and mildew, two common allergens. According to a NASA study, indoor plants prove very effective at controlling indoor air pollution. They can absorb gasses such as formaldehyde, benzene, and trichloroethylene. Designer: Jillian Tackaberry

Track Music And Moves With On!

The iriver On is a player that helps you enjoy your music and track your exercise routine progress in an easy interactive way. The device features sensor technology that can monitor and transmit biometric data. It sports an ergonomic design for the neckband, which fits snugly even during most strenuous exercises. Crafted from high-quality urethane material, the neckband hosts 6 function keys that are placed on either sides in front. They offer controls to the entertainment and health monitoring systems. Details: The buttons are waterproof and integrated into the design. The device features stereo earphones with a built-in measurement sensor made by innovative technology. Users can receive various information including accurate heart rate and related data from earphones. Designer: Jeongbeom Han

Particle accelerator that can fit on a tabletop opens new chapter for science research

Particle accelerator that can fit on a tabletop opens new chapter for science research

This tabletop set-up accelerated approximately half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch. It's a feat that previously required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields. Credit: Courtesy of Rafal Zgadzaj.

Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have built a tabletop particle accelerator that can generate energies and speeds previously reached only by major facilities that are hundreds of meters long and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

"We have accelerated about half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch," said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences. "Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields. It's a downsizing of a factor of approximately 10,000."

The results, which were published this week in Nature Communications, mark a major milestone in the advance toward the day when multi-gigaelectronvolt (GeV) laser plasma accelerators are standard equipment in research laboratories around the world.

Downer said he expects 10 GeV accelerators of a few inches in length to be developed within the next few years, and he believes 20 GeV accelerators of similar size could be developed within a decade.

Downer said that the electrons from the current 2 GeV accelerator can be converted into "hard" X-rays as bright as those from large-scale facilities. He believes that with further refinement they could even drive an X-ray free electron laser, the brightest X-ray source currently available to science.

A tabletop X-ray laser would be transformative for chemists and biologists, who could use the bright X-rays to study the molecular basis of matter and life with atomic precision, and femtosecond time resolution, without traveling to a large national facility.

"The X-rays we'll be able to produce are of femtosecond duration, which is the time scale on which molecules vibrate and the fastest chemical reactions take place," said Downer. "They will have the energy and brightness to enable us to see, for example, the atomic structure of single protein molecules in a living sample."

To generate the energetic electrons capable of producing these X-rays, Downer and his colleagues employed an acceleration method known as laser-plasma acceleration. It involves firing a brief but intensely powerful laser pulse into a puff of gas.

"To a layman it looks like low technology," said Downer.

"All you do is make a little puff of gas with the right density and profile. The laser pulse comes in. It ionizes that gas and makes the plasma, but it also imprints structure in it.

"It separates electrons from the ion background and creates these enormous internal space-charge fields. Then the charged particles emerge right out of the plasma, get trapped in those fields, which are racing along at nearly the speed of light with that laser pulse, and accelerate in them."

Downer compared it to what would happen if you threw a motorboat into a lake with its engines churning. The boat (the laser) makes a splash, then creates a wave as it moves through the lake at high speed. During that initial splash some droplets (charged particles) break off, get caught up in the wave and accelerate by surfing on it.

"At the other end of the lake they get thrown off into the environment at incredibly high speeds," said Downer. "That's our 2 GeV electron beam."

Former UT Austin physicist Toshiki Tajima and the late UCLA physicist John Dawson conceived the idea of laser-plasma acceleration in the late 1970s. Scientists have been experimenting with this concept since the early 1990s, but they've been limited by the power of their lasers. As a result the field had been stuck at a maximum energy of about 1 GeV for years.

Downer and his colleagues were able to use the Texas Petawatt Laser, one of the most powerful lasers in the world, to push past this barrier. In particular the petawatt laser enabled them to use gases that are much less dense than those used in previous experiments.

"At a lower density, that laser pulse can travel faster through the gas," said Downer. "But with the earlier generations of lasers, when the density got too low, there wasn't enough of a splash to inject electrons into the accelerator, so you got nothing out. This is where the petawatt laser comes in. When it enters low density plasma, it can make a bigger splash."

Downer said that now that he and his team have demonstrated the workability of the 2 GeV accelerator, it should be only a matter of time until 10 GeV accelerators are built. That threshold is significant because 10 GeV devices would be able to do the X-ray analyses that biologists and chemists want.

"I don't think a major breakthrough is required to get there," he said. "If we can just keep the funding in place for the next few years, all of this is going to happen.

"Companies are now selling petawatt lasers commercially, and as we get better at doing this, companies will come into being to make 10 GeV accelerator modules. Then the end users, the chemists and biologists, will come in, and that will lead to more innovations and discoveries."

10 Unique Laptops

Here are 10 really unique and cool laptops. From a dual screen laptop, to a split keyboard laptop to even a million dollar laptop!

 

The Million Dollar Laptop

UK-based bespoke luxury goods creator Luvaglio has created the first million dollar laptop. That's what the first of their luxury laptops will sell for. Full details of the laptop have not been released at this point, but it is known that it incorporates a 17" wide LED lit screen with a specially designed anti-reflective glare coating for clear and brighter image, 128GB of Solid State Disk space and a slot loading Blue-Ray drive. There is an integrated screen cleaning device and a very rare coloured diamond piece of jewellery that doubles up as the power button when placed into the laptop, and also acts as security identification.


Orkin's Rolltop

The Orkin Design Rolltop would definitely be an item in the must-have list of most geeks, even if it is but a concept at point of publishing. Why do we say so? This "notebook" comes with a flexible OLED display which also handles multitouch for those who are head over heels with the iPhone. When fully rolled out, it ends up as a 17" flatscreen display but can also be folded into a 13" tablet when required. No idea on whether it will run on wireless power or not, but it seems as though the detachable stand will hold the tablet's stylus, power adapter and USB ports.


Datamancer's Steampunk Laptop

This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts.


Thinkpad Reserve Edition

 

When IBM handed all of their laptop division to Lenovo, many feared that the classic Thinkpad design would lose its way, but with this improved design most of the people would be impressed by the laptop concept.


Ergonomic Dual Screen Split Keyboard Laptop

The sweetness of this amazing Ergonomic Dual Screen Split Keyboard Notebook Portable Personal Computer isn't only the fact that the keyboard splits open to give a computer user more room to fit their hands, but that it has a second LCD hidden underneath it. What a fantastic idea. The second screen works in concert with the first screen – giving the user a “drag and send” capability for open windows or programs, or act independently as a pen-based input screen for note taking, sketching, and just about anything else a user can do to write into the interface. This makes the EDSSKN of tremendous benefit to not only writers and word processors, but artists and designers as well.


HP Girly Laptop

Some girls want the extra attention not only from men but also from actual gadgets and even cool looking laptops, such as these HP concepts made especially for women. Each one of these designs by Nikita Buyanov has its own set of specific that would recognize special pampering that a girl wishes for; they are classy looking, stylish, trendy and even provide extra productivity for your personality. Unfortunately they have yet to be truly manufactured, but if enough would show interest, maybe next year's HP models would provide a different feminine look that is made just for women.


Canova's Dual-Screen Laptop

This Dual Touch Screen Laptop from Canova is an ultimate notebook design meant for the creative mind. The notebook features dual display with touch-sensitive screens, sketch pad, music score, graph paper, an electronic pen and a dedicated hardware for its smooth functioning. Unfortunately, it's only sold in Italy and Australia.


Fujitsu's DJ Laptop

Fujitsu DJ laptop, as it was called, has a 20-inch primary LCD display easily folded closed to enable the turntable function, which can be accessed via a touch-sensitive screen on the outside. The laptop lets you browse all your favorite tracks same as on a vinyl turntable.


TYPE-N01 Emergency Laptop

NEC has teamed up with Takara to create the presumably mad scientist-approved machine, which sports all the token stickers, labels, and even wallpapers that make this device so similar to those seen laying around Duke Nukem laboratories. Beneath the facade is a LaVie G type L laptop, 15.4-inch display. Flanked on the side is the very necessary "Emergency Button," which apparently shuts down the machine in case of unexpected intruders. Launched in 2006, only 300 units of the highly secretive TYPE-NO1 were made costing up to ¥174,510 ($1,476).


2015 Compenion Laptop

Felix Schmidberger design for a laptop for 2015 with OLED touch screen. The computer itself has an OLED touchscreen, where you can directly work on, much like with a umpc or pda. The whole screen is a slider, as it can be moved forward to reveal a secondOLED touchscreen underneath, where you can have a keyboard or working controls, similar to a setup with 2 monitors.