When you think of dorm rooms, luxury isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Living like a student doesn’t always mean top ramen and uncomfortable bunk beds, especially when a firm like Fateeva Design is designing it. They’ve constructed a 186 square foot flat fit for a young professional in Odessa, Ukraine. When they inherited it, the owners were confused on what do with such a small space until Fateeva suggested turning it into a student rental. The studio uses built-in furniture that lines the perimeter that contains a raised bed with storage, desk, kitchen, and a bathroom. There is even a small entryway with a built-in closet for hanging clothes. Click the pics for more views of the student residence.
Beds in tiny homes can be a hard to thing to deal with because they take so much space, and you’re not even using them during waking hours. Instead of a lofted option, Ana White of Spruc’d came up with an affordable solution to create more space without sacrificing comfortability. Enter the elevator bed. She constructed a mechanical sleeping system with the use of garage pulleys and sliding door hardware on a budget of $500. The full bed lifts when not in use and also makes enough room for a guest bed underneath.
The building plans for the bed as well as the entire tiny home are available here.
LifeEdited:Maui is a model for how we can innovate to live in the future. It allows a family to live a big, happy, modern, convenient off-grid life in a 1,000 square foot home that functions like one twice its size. You may have already seen it in the New York Times and you’ll soon see it on TV. Some key details:
LifeEdited began in 2010 when Graham Hill, founder of popular eco website TreeHugger, crowdsourced his 420 sft New York City apartment. Named LifeEdited 1, it demonstrates the “less but better” lifestyle by creating a beautiful apartment with the functionality of a much larger space – seats 12 for dinner, has proper sleeping quarters for 2 guests, a great home office, a home theater, and is extremely energy efficient. With its own TED talk, three NYT features and coverage by most major media outlets, it has become one of the most widely published apartments in the world. The follow-on project, LifeEdited 2, has similar functionality, in an even smaller 350sft space. You may have seen it on the cover of Dwell or on Dream Big Live Small.
Please click on a thumbnail to see a slideshow. Bloggers and journalists are free to download the web resolution photos or the high resolution photos. It isn’t mandatory but it is much appreciated if you can credit Shawn Hanna for the photography.
As we near the end of summer we’d like to provide you all with the first glimpses of our newest project, LifeEdited Maui. LifeEdited’s CEO, Graham Hill is currently on location in Hawaii overseeing the build. For the month of September we’ll be showing you the process of how we are designing our eco compound. As October rolls around, our construction updates will be in real time leading up to the big unveiling.
Site preparation
The goal of LifeEdited Maui is to build an off-grid, low impact, luxurious, space-efficient four bedroom house in 1000 sq ft. LifeEdited Maui is about finding the most innovative answers about how the future will live. We are presenting a version of the future that is sustainable, resilient and, frankly, awesome.
We believe in self sufficiency and tasty food, so we have already planted 30 different kinds of edible plants including bananas, mangos, and papayas. Our long term vision includes this fruit orchard, raised garden beds, some purely endemic Hawaii acreage as well as creating nurturing habitat for birds, bees and other local fauna. Walking paths, benches, hammocks and agriculture structures around the property will encourage engagement and connection with nature.
As the building process approaches completion, the applications of transforming design as exemplified from our previous projects will also take shape in LifeEdited Maui. Beds that fold into walls, tables that expand, rooms that do double and triple duty—serving to maximize available area for this live work space.
One of the guiding principles behind LifeEdited Maui is to have as light of a footprint on the environment as possible while still building homes that don’t make compromises in form or function.
Wood frame coming together
Stay tuned to our social media and newsletter for more updates!
To power the LifeEdited Maui eco compound, we are using the amazing Hawaii sunshine to light our solar panels, but we need power at night too. And we wanted to find a company that shares our vision of leaving the planet better than we found it. Happily, our island neighbors Blue Planet Energy share this vision. The Blue Ion 2.0 Energy System that they created sets the bar for performance, safety, and reliability. This system allows LifeEdited Maui to be both off-grid and luxurious — it’s the smart future.
Until now, batteries have been a key missing piece in our sustainable future. Blue Planet Energy has changed that. Performance is excellent — rapid recharging and high output mean that you don’t have to change your lifestyle or worry about how the system works. You also don’t have to worry about safety. The science of Lithium Ferrous Phosphate (LFP) chemistry makes the batteries much safer than competing products. The reliability is exemplified by the 15-year performance warranty — best in the business. For more details, see the Blue Ion 2.0 Energy System.
Henk Rogers, founder of Blue Planet Energy
Blue Planet Energy CEO Henk Rogers is a well-known entrepreneur and innovator behind the popular Tetris franchise. He has since engrossed himself in the research, development, and advocacy of renewable energy storage to aid in the adoption of sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar. Rogers has applied the Blue Ion system to his home on Tantalus in Honolulu as well as his Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a Ranch home on the Big Island, completely taking his properties off grid. “Why am I doing this?” Rogers asks. “I want to find out what it’s like living in the future. It’s pretty nice. I didn’t sacrifice anything, my quality of life, to achieve any of this stuff.” His ranch also contains an 8500 square foot energy lab and is continuing a project to grow enough organic food to feed 50 people on the property.
The Blue Planet Energy Research Lab at the Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a Ranch with Henk Rogers and co founders Aleks Velhner (left) and Vincent Paul Ponthieux
Blue Planet Energy and LifeEdited are proud to help Hawaii reach its goal to be 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.
To get in touch with Blue Planet Energy follow them on their Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Stay tuned for more details.
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