How An Architect Filled A 340-Sq-Ft NYC Studio With Hidden Storage _ Architectural Digest

I bought the apartment in 2018. I had a really great realtor, and he had suggested taking a look in Tudor City because the apartments are affordable. There's not a lot of demand for these apartments, in part because they're small. I paid 310. That's about average, I think, in the building. Tudor City was one of the first planned residential skyscrapers in the world, and it was also one of the first planned middle-class communities. They marketed them very much towards young women who were moving to the city to work on Madison Avenue, or young professionals who were coming to the city. It's three blocks long. It goes from 41st to 43rd. It was designed as a sustainable kind of community, and so it had its own parks, its own post office, its own shops, and I think that was part of the appeal. My name is Andrew Magnus. I'm an architect, and I helped Ben with his apartment. I'm Ben Riskin. I live here, and welcome to my 340-square-foot apartment in New York City. When I moved in, I knew that I would wanna renovate the apartment. I knew it was gonna be stressful. I knew that, in part, I would probably be here for some of it, and having an architect, I felt like I could have a real conversation with about my life and the way I was living in the space was really important. That's a dangerous question to get in circles. We met through just gay New York. Andy and I had been friends, and I knew he was an architect. I've done all sizes of apartments in New York City. This might be the smallest. It is a game of squeezing out as much as you can from every inch. My philosophy is really function first, making sure that my clients are going to get what they need out of the space. One of the ways that I think we approached this that made us a really good team, and I think also just kind of came out of friendship, was like, how are you using the space? When you cook, what are you cooking? Not just cooking, but sleeping and entertaining and working, and we went through each thing and kind of really tried to figure out precisely what you needed for that activity. We had a budget of around $40,000 for the renovation, and it came in right about that. It was priced wonderfully low, perhaps to our contractor's detriment. We initially planned for the renovation to take six weeks. I think it ended up taking about six months. It's like, with a renovation, you kind of have time, price, and quality, and you can only have two of the three. Partially because Ben is a friend, it was really important to kind of get this right, and I think we nailed it. I agree. You're still friends. We still are, right? Our dogs don't get along. He's relentless. This is my kitchen. Initially, when I bought the apartment, the kitchen was pushed up against the wall, and it was really small. It was about half the size. We really were trying to figure out how to fit a lot of kitchen into what is still a very small space. I have a friend who owns a houseboat, and he designed his own houseboat. I was out there one day in the summer, and I just started opening his kitchen cabinets and looking at things, and so the kitchen is very much inspired by the houseboat, but also tiny homes and Winnebago's and things that have a lot of stuff in a really small space. One of the examples is we built this cupboard, and we knew the cupboard would be there, but then I saw in my friend's houseboat that he had a dish rack that drained directly into his sink, and so that's what we did here. There's actually metal grates that run along about two-thirds of this. I just put a regular store-bought dish rack in there, and then I'm able to wash my dishes, put them in here, and they just drain directly into the sink, and it means that I don't have to use counter space. There's only so many places that sell kitchenware for small kitchens, like Muji and Yamazaki Home, places that are designing for Winnebago's and houseboats. This, for example, is my cookware. And it's designed by a company that makes induction cookware for sailboats and boats with galleys. There's four pots, one pan, and then what's nice is you can actually take all of this. You attach a handle to it, and it works as a pot, and you can just use it as a pot, or then you can take the handle off, and it can go in the oven. When I found it, it was like a big lifesaver, but then I was even more excited because they make them in bright colors, so I was able to get a blue one. And it's perfect. It's induction, and it all collapses. And it allows me to have a really robust amount of cookware. There's a lot of storage underneath here. This is essentially the pantry corridor. I've always really loved kitchens that have food displayed, rice and flour and oats, and use these grates in a way that could kind of really make this a deliberate kitchen. It also then took a lot of that storage pressure off of the drawers. And then I have an induction burner. It plugs in, but it just drops into the counter. And that's been great. These are possibly the favorite gift I've ever received, my Leather Daddy salt and pepper shakers. This was sort of the architectural feature that was really exciting to add. We created this little spice cabinet with this big pop of color in it. Spices are the kind of thing that can take up a ton of room on a counter. Also the kind of thing that they come in sizes, of various sizes. And so I had a lot of them, and I really needed to be able to put them somewhere that wasn't gonna clutter the countertop or the drawers underneath. This is my living area. It's kind of a combination, live and work and movie watching, sometimes sleeping on the couch. I'm very reluctant to put a lot of stuff on the windowsill. The windows are a hundred years old and they kind of speak for themselves. I try to focus on things that you can kind of see through that don't take away from the window. So I found this like glass head at a thrift store on Cape Cod, or I've used like acrylic shelves to be able to give this plant a little height. Things are small, like a little binocular to be able to look out at the boats. I kind of like to make little worlds in the plants and I'm similar to the clear, like anything that's mirrored in a small space will make it feel bigger. So I got like, I found this kind of mirrored rock and this little like frog made out of shells. Being able to like put like rocks that pick up the light or crystals that can kind of pick up the light, it just makes it really fun. Everything is wood. It's all custom millwork. It needed to be lower to be able to have a little window seat, but then it needed to go higher to be able to accommodate the AC, which is in the wall. Basically it just pops out and then I can access the AC or the radiator that way. That other one also pops out. We decided on this little slope as a way to create a separate nook seating area. I have a TV here and it kind of comes out. I really hate the way a large screen looks. It just kind of draws all of your attention to it, like a big black, like box that sucks you in. This is sort of my work area. I reached out to a guy who makes like camper vans and runs a company called Venture House. When we designed the space, we designed a slot for the table, but we didn't get the table made. It just, I couldn't afford it. A couple of years later, I had this table made. It goes to two heights. So what's nice is it can be a coffee table for the couch as well. It's a work table. It's a sewing table. And then I have this area down here that I can reach that keeps all my fabrics and sewing materials. The minute it came, I remember just thinking like, oh, this really kind of completes the transformer quality of the space. If it's at this height, then the table is like a work or dining table. If I lower it, then I move it over there and it's a coffee table, but it does totally transform the space. When we built it, we built this like double shelf so that we could play with the height. This space to me has been a lot about trying to like play with fabrics and softness and bright colors. My theory was always, if it was a white canvas, I could add and subtract to it all I wanted. When you do get like pops of color, like the orange or the yellow frame, or even just the green of the plants, you really like actually see the object. I remember it was like a July day when I bought the couch and it was really hot. And I rode my bike to room and board where I promptly laid on every single couch in the store to see if I could fit and sleep on it, because I like to nap on a couch. And so I ended up with this one because I eliminated a lot of other freestanding furniture. There was a lot of room to get a big couch. It was really important that I had enough seating to accommodate myself and friends. The idea was less that I was going to be like lounging on the chaise part, and more that I would be able to use a tray and create a small table out of it. I mean, when I'm here alone or just with the dog, that's pretty much where I eat my meals. All of the art in the apartment is from friends or people that I know personally. I was in New York in my twenties and I have a lot of friends who are artists. And I had the opportunity to be able to support their art, to be like surrounded by your friendships and your relationships and your time in New York. It's the kind of love I want in my home. The walls are like feature walls. And then the small things can be on shelves. We built these kind of open, what looked like floating shelves, but they're not up against the wall so that I could get a little bit of an end area to the living space, but also to be able to put some books and objets and whatnot. This is my favorite item. It's one of my favorite things I own, a crystal Nokia brick phone that I bought at the London Terrace Flea Market, RIP. I just think it's ridiculous. I don't understand the use for it, which is why I love it. So like living in a small space means that you really have to prioritize what you want to see. In these sort of smaller spaces, you really need to focus on the things that are squeezing every inch out of it. It's like similarly like squeezing every emotion out of it. So this is my bedroom. I sleep on the floor. No, I have this Murphy bed. It comes down, you pull that out, and now I got a bed. I had it designed and built by a cabinet shop on the Upper East Side called Little Wolf Cabinetry. It was pretty simple. I gave them a really sense of like, I really want it to be kind of clean lines and square. I knew I wanted there to be some cabinets on one side and some shelving on the other. Honestly, a lot of the off-the-rack stuff was more expensive than getting it custom built. I also was able to get some extra storage up top, which is great. I use the shelving. I use the cabinets. Putting the bed away, similar to putting the table away, it transforms the space. When this goes up, it doesn't feel like this is a bedroom. It feels like this is a multi-use area. My office is in a closet. I wasn't using it a ton. And then during quarantine, I started my own business. And so I started working from home and I really needed a place that like, could be a dedicated office. I took the door off and then the same people who made the bed created this standing desk with these cabinets and additional shelving all the way up. So this has become my office. I also really like offices. Like I'd like a place where I could put a bunch of pictures and small things and have like more of like fun. Clutter. It's the most cluttered space in the apartment, but because it's sunk in, it feels really contained. So I ended up going to one of those lighting stores in Chinatown and I bought an adhesive LED light. I basically just adhered to the back of each pole. Yamazaki Home makes this sort of electronics hiding thing. And it's just like the pops off and it's just filled with like, you know, cords and a modem. I think with the white, it just blends in enough that it doesn't feel like it's taking up space. About a year and a half ago, I adopted a dog and she needed her own like private area. I wanted to give her like a small space that was hers. And so I decided to use the area under the office to create a little space where I could put like food and water bowls. This is my foyer. I bike everywhere. And so I needed a way to keep the bike in my apartment, but not be constantly in the way. So I decided that like the foyer area was like kind of the best area to keep it. When I decided to convert one of the closets into a standing desk, I took the door off myself, which I didn't realize is like steel and wood. And so I immediately like nearly fell back. It's very, very heavy. I didn't want to get rid of it. And there's not really anywhere you can store a door. And so I leaned it up against here. Over time, I thought like, well, why don't I just put hangers on it or coat hooks on it? I think it's like kind of funny and quirky and I can like hang my umbrella off of the door knob and stuff. So this is the bathroom. It's right off the foyer. I did not have enough money to renovate it, but also the flooring and the tub are all original. And so I didn't really want to change that. They're awesome. I gave it a nice coat of paint and tried to make it a little bit cuter, but bathrooms are expensive to renovate. Sometimes it's just about how a renovation changes someone's life rather than how fancy it is. And I think I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. So some of my favorite projects are smaller projects because it really has an impact on someone's life. And Ben was just kind of beaming. Yeah, that's how I felt walking in. I mean, I've lived in New York for 20 years. Like I'm not going anywhere, but it felt like walking in and being like, this is my tree, like this is my roots in New York. Like I live in this space. It was like the first time I'd ever had an apartment that was designed exactly for how I wanted to use it. I mean, every second of New York living can be stressful from the minute you walk out the door into the minute you walk back in the door. It's like a huge breath out every time I walk in here. Even now it feels like home and it feels open and refreshing to be here.