Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

Tokyo’s Tiniest Apartments are Like Expensive Little Closets

Posted: 09 May 2013 10:00 AM PDT

Picture a tiny windowless room, just big enough to stretch out in (as long as you aren’t of above-average height) and store a few meager belongings. It sounds like the description of a prison cell, but young professionals in Tokyo are willingly paying up to $600 per month to live in cabinet-like rooms like these.

These pictures from a recent Japanese news story show the “geki-sema,” or “share houses” in all their claustrophobic detail. The cabinets are reminiscent of the capsule hotels that have been popular in Japan and other countries for years. The difference is that these “apartments” are slightly larger and are meant for long-term occupancy, not simply one night of shut-eye.

The typical geki-sema resident spends most of his or her day at the office, outdoors, or spending time away from home with friends. These tiny chambers aren’t meant to be gathering places for groups of buddies; they are strictly for sleeping, changing clothes, and perhaps keeping a few important items close at hand.

(images via: Daily Mail)

Tokyo landlords began offering this strange type of housing to cash in on the chronic housing shortage that plagues the city. The impossibly tiny apartments are often stacked to maximize the number of residents that can fit into a small area. While we can get behind the idea of small-space living, this concept takes it to the extreme. Without a private bathroom or even a window, it seems that it would be very simple to lose your sanity in a room not much larger than a coffin.

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Good for More Than Just Towers: Lamp Made of 7K LEGOs

Posted: 08 May 2013 04:00 PM PDT

If you played with LEGO bricks as a kid, those transparent window pieces were either a huge pain or worth their weight in gold. They were rare, but there wasn’t a whole lot you could do with them. Designer Tobias Tøstesen figured out what to do with them: build a ridiculously massive LEGO chandelier.

Tøstesen used 7,000 of the clear bricks to create his unusual light piece for Milan Design Week. The three layers of window pieces are separated – and held together – by circular metal frames.

When lit from within by an omnidirectional LED, the fixture gives off an amazing, glittering kind of effect. The plastic surfaces refract light beautifully, making a the chandelier into a kind of elegant disco ball.

The enormous sculpture/light fixture would stand well on its own as a thing of beauty, but when hung up and lit it is complex and wonderful and makes us want to stand inside of it to study every last little plastic weld.

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