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Apartment Therapy's Big Book Of Small, Cool Spaces

Whether you inhabit a studio or a sprawling house with one challenging space, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, co-founder of the most popular interior design website, Apartment Therapy, will help you transform tiny into totally fabulous. According to Maxwell, size constraints can actually unlock your design creativity and allow you to focus on what’s essential. In this vibrant book, he shares forty small, cool spaces that will change your thinking forever. These apartments and houses demonstrate hundreds of inventive solutions for creating more space in your home, and for making it more comfortable. Leading us through entrances, living rooms, kitchens and dining rooms, bedrooms, home offices, and kids’ rooms, Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces is brimming with ingenious tips and ideas, such as: •   Shifting the sense of scale through contrasting colors•   Adding airiness by using transparent collections •   Utilizing the area under a loft bed for a kitchen and mini-bar •   Tucking an office with chic vintage doors into an unused bedroom corner  In each dwelling Maxwell points out what makes the layout work and what adds style. Most of the “therapy” involves minor tweaks that can be accomplished on a limited budget, such as dividing a room with sheer curtains, turning a door into a desk, or disguising electrical boxes with art displays. An extensive resource guide, including Maxwell’s favorite websites for buying desks, open storage solutions, and much more, will help you turn even the tiniest residence into a place you are always happy to come home to. 

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Potter Style; 1 edition (May 11, 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307464601

ISBN-13: 978-0307464606

Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 1.1 x 9.8 inches

Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #351,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #113 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > Small Homes & Cottages #704 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > Decorating & Design > Decorating

Decorating books could be divided between the ones that instruct, and the ones that display. Terence Conran began a different way of discussing how people live in spaces, and AT has been different in that it shows how people live in apartments -- which aren't just small spaces. They are, by definition, smaller parts of a whole space -- a building, a street, a neighborhood, a city. AT led the way for thinking about functional living in apartments - and the entire line of 'landing strip' furniture now available would seem to be their doing.This book, Apartment Therapy's Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces, unfortunately, doesn't do that -- it shows little snippets and still lifes organized by room (bed, bath, living, etc.) without showing floorplans, and entire spaces. (With the possible exception of the G-R storage space outside the door to their apartment which mentions how they keep the space neat in deference to their neighbors.)Its more decorating porn than erotica: it shows you what someone else does, with no way to draw on those ideas -- rather than excite your own senses about what's possible for you and your space.For example, the old Gillingham-Ryan pad (as shown in "Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions") was an object lesson in so many ways: rethink materials for their function, not purpose; expand one area (kitchen) and minimize another (lr) - but together, the sum is greater than the parts. In the bedroom, you need a place to sleep, and a place to store things -- but you don't necessarily need space to walk around.It's unfortunate -- for all that AT has to say about living in (relatively) small spaces that this book misses the point.

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