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House Beautiful Small Spaces
by Louis Oliver Gropp (Editor),
Christine Pittel, House Beautiful magazine

Excerpt
Let there be space. Open, generous, high-ceilinged space is the exception rather than the rule these days. Such material comforts as fine silk or polished mahogany are not half so rare as ample beautifully proportioned rooms. But those of us confined to more compact quarters should keep in mind one heartening fact. As every designer worth his tape measure knows the size of a room is as much a matter of perception as square footage.

In the eye of the beholder space can expand or contract. In this elasticity lies the possibility of invention. Some space-swelling strategies are borrowed from design history, others are born out of sheer wit and desperation at the drafting table, and many are poured straight from a paint can.

The first decision for anyone facing a small room is fundamental: Do you want to make a tight space appear larger, or should you acquiesce to the snug dimensions and cultivate coziness? If creating an illusion of roominess is the answer, then sleights of pattern or color can work magic. So can editing -- tame the anarchy of possessions. Brandish mirrors. Widen a room with strong horizontal lines, heighten it with verticals, stretch it with diagonals. Or choose the opposite approach -- give in to reality and divide and conquer, packing everything you own into a crowded jumble that proves the counterintuitive Chinese principle that space expands when subdivided. Search for infinity in the infinitesimal.

The most audacious designers might just forget the measurements altogether and change the subject, whisking the eye into -- a fantasy world with shocks of color or an operatic piece of furniture. The bigger the lie, the larger the space.

Don't be cowed by meager dimensions. Be clever. No beautiful windows in your apartment? Try cove lighting instead. Light is the medium of mystery and revelation in space, and controlling it conjures magic and sets the tone of a room. As Italian painters who mastered chiaroscuro have long known, shadow is light's handmaiden. No wonder so many people like to panel a study and isolate themselves in a pool of lamplight, where a spirit of contemplation reigns and space dissolves in thought.

Architecture history books are full of classic solutions to spatial squeeze. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House outside of Chicago, a rectangle of glass that hovers above the flood plain, is bounded primarily by reflections. No one pays much attention to square footage when the rooms inside this small masterpiece merge into trees and sky. Then there is that great prestidigitator of space, Frank Lloyd Wright, who made ordinary-size rooms grand by creating narrow, low-ceilinged antechambers to pass through before the release into more generous spaces that flow out of sight. Space is relative: Small is smaller, and big becomes bigger when each is juxtaposed to the other.But you don't need an architectural degree to make the most of your measurements. The strategies illustrated on the following pages offer a head start on how to take space into your own hands.

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Hearst Corporation

Table of Contents

	foreword	9
	Introduction	11
	Illusion or Reality	13
	Scale and Balance: the editing process	39
	Color and Pattern: white and beyond	59
	Sleight of Hand: mirrors, air, and light	79
	Inventing Space: finding room, making room	99
	Double Duty: one-room living, dual-purpose spaces	119
	Great Spaces: five ingenious solutions	135
	design directory	172
	photography credits	175
	acknowledgments	176