NEVER TOO SMALL: DIY Plant-filled Waterfront Loft, Amsterdam - 45sqm/484sqft
My philosophy when it comes to designing small spaces is to iterate until it feels right.
It also helps a lot if you live in the space and can really try out what works for you.
My name is Koen Vrijman and I love to make things. I've made sculptures for light art
festivals, I've made exhibitions and I've also made most of the things you can see around here.
I live in this loft with my girlfriend Vadim and our cat Sok.
Living in a small apartment is a very tailored way of living. Everything has to be considered.
That also includes your furniture. Multifunctional modular furniture like
mole crates is perfect for small spaces. Mole crates allow you to customize your space
whichever way you like to meet your specific needs. Storage, bedside table, room divider,
coffee table and for me I customize a tv unit and a side table for my tiny living room.
You don't need any handy skills or specialized tools to install mole crates.
Love it. And you can even add wheels to make them portable. Love it even more.
Mole crate is made of top quality and sustainable baltic birch plywood manufactured in baltic sea
region. This plywood offers great strength and durability and will last for a long time.
The system is designed with longevity in mind and if one day I no longer need this side table for
my living room, it can be transformed into a side table for my sleeping area or two little stools
for my dining area. Genius. You might be wondering why you haven't heard of mole crate? Well that's
because mole crates is only launching now on Indiegogo and we have teamed up with them to
create a secret mole calling perk just for you. This secret perk includes everything you need to
make this multifunctional piece and to get an exclusive discount, links in the description.
I know you will love them. In the 90s the municipality of Amsterdam transformed this
district. All the houses could be built without any aesthetical restrictions.
So all the houses in the street look completely different. This apartment building was finished in
1998. This unit was owned by my mother and we decided to buy it from her and renovate it
by ourselves. The loft is 45 square meters. We fell in love with a high ceiling, big windows
opening up to the waterfront and the playfulness of the layout. In this space there is a loft floor
where you could sleep on. On the lower floor there was a kitchen and a living space. We added a kitchen
island to the kitchen. We built a frame around the bed. We also extended the terrace by having a
floating deck. The entrance is pretty small so we tried to keep it clean and clear so you can look
straight through the house and see the water. The coats are hung in a cabinet around the corner so
they are not in the way when entering or leaving the house. There's a mirror above the door to
bounce the light around in this corner of the apartment. The ceiling light in the hall came
from Turkey. I found it in an abandoned factory in Istanbul and brought it home in my hand luggage.
The shoes are stored in a cabinet on the loft floor which also blocks the line of sight into
the sleeping area. There are some pretty big plants in the living room area. Our windows
are all facing the south so there's plenty of light coming in. The thing I'm most proud of
is the TV. We suspended it by a rail on the ceiling so it can be moved back and forth.
When it's placed on the wall there's actually a sculpture on the back of it.
The eye-catcher of the living room is the pink cabinet backed by green tiles. The cabinet stores
a lot of stuff and features a hidden desk and a hiding place for our cat. The left side doubles
as a scratching surface which was a great idea at the time but in reality she prefers to scratch
our couch. We placed the green tiles ourselves and one of the hidden gems is the tile in the
corner which was made by us. It features our own signatures. We like the simpleness and the
calmness of the original gray kitchen so we decided to keep it and extend it with a kitchen
aisle. My girlfriend loves to cook and spices are really important so we made a huge spice rack above
the kitchen aisle. This is an actual streetlamp which we got from the municipality. We converted
to the kitchen light. The washing machine used to be in the kitchen. We moved it to the bathroom
to make space for a dishwasher. The round table is a nice contrast to all the other square furniture
in the house. Normally it doesn't take up too much space but extended it can host up to eight people.
The bed is surrounded by a set of curtains. These help with keeping the mosquitoes and light out
and it can create a separate zone when sleeping. We have two smaller electric roller blinds
deflecting some of the sunlight on sunny days or for privacy. We only had one remote. We made a
playful solution to have the remote accessible from each area in the house. We have floor to
ceiling mirrors on our wardrobes for a more spacious feeling and extra light. The light
switches are located in the entrance which is very inconvenient when you're lying in bed. Luckily I
had a huge industrial switch laying around which I had found in an abandoned factory in Belgium.
I made an open drying cabinet which has plenty of room for our wet clothes. It also doubles as a
room defier. The bathroom is next to the hall. I found a small washing machine that could squeeze
into our bathroom. After figuring out how to install the water pipes I also built a custom
cabinet around the washing machine. A very neat feature of our bathroom cabinet is the integrated
litter box for our cat. We expanded the outdoor space by building a floating terrace. This was a
very challenging build because we had to build it indoor, then partly de-assemble it, move it around
the central column and then reassemble it outside again. The style here it's a combination of many
personal things. For example things I found like the switches, the light, trying to keep everything
neat so having a lot of dressers and things to tuck things away. I like to make things myself
and that really creates a certain style. It's a really combination of existing elements that's
how the style here evolved. Thanks for watching and if you're an architect or designer with a
project we could feature please share it with us at nevertosmall.com submissions