modern living room ideas for small apartments

bill: my name is bill andi'm an environmentalist. and we're here in new yorkcity in the east village. i moved into this space 10 yearsago, and it was in such bad condition. plastic bags as insulationin the walls. and the windows wereboarded up. the floor had basicallyholes-- you could see below it. i was recycling.

i'm an environmentalist. and so i didn't want to comehome to the same dirt that i was facing every day inmy life of cleaning up abandoned gardens. i had all these criteria,though, so i wrote them down. i had to have recycledmaterials. i had to somehow make theapartment look bigger with depth of field andlighting tricks. but then it also had to beexactly opposite of the stuff

i was doing in the daytime. it had to be you'd come in,it was perfectly clean. when i first moved in here,everybody in the east village wore black, and they didit for two reasons. to be cool, but alsobecause it was impossible to stay clean. these panels are plexiglas, andyou can see that this is the early design. the lights are in the corner.

i didn't know what to do,so i screwed it in. and i was experimentingwith it a lot. so then i come outwith this wall. instead of having the kick fromunderneath, i put the kick in the inside. i came up with a way to hangthem with fishing line, so there's no screws. if you can get behind here--it's almost like tinfoil, but you see how it moves?

and when it's a windy day,you'll see all this crazy shimmering. sometimes when you design stufffrom scratch, you'd have to really open up yourmind, and say, well, that's not right. but boy, it looks great. i started asking people betterways to do projects. the ceiling came out so goodthat i just laid on the floor and i just stood up inthis kind of mirror,

and thought, wow. the squares almost look likevery nice ceiling panels. so there's early designs mixedwith later designs here. and there you are. streamlined, everythinghidden-- but yet everything's here. this was something i gotfrom pan am when they went out of business. wow, these are really beautifulcabinets, and they

have such history. then i found this old-school'50s piece, and this is how they used to do it inside thewall, and i was trying to do some of that. in the bathroom, again,is recycled material. originally i didn't know whatto do with the shower. i'm still working on it, but ihave the drain out here and a drain over here. so you don't need a wall.

also, the floor isa heated floor. this little thermostatcontrols the floor. i saw this is in a casino, andi was like, gotta have that. again, the sink, you can seestraight through it. it makes the spacelook bigger. one time i saw one of thosecommercials where they made everything white. andi was like, that's how i'd want my apartment. just the product.

i know a lot of people come inhere, and they're like, it's this a spaceship? what is this? and i'm like, no. it's perfect. it's nothing it's what i want. i don't want anything. tracy metro: likehome and design? have facebook, twitter,tumblr, and pinterest?

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