AD Small Spaces: These 5 homes are little pockets of eccentricity (2024)

Bursting with vibrancy and freshness, these five small spaces from India and beyond will grab your attention instantly with their solid-coloured walls, bright interiors, and unique design. Take notes if you love a space with personality!

A 500-Square-Foot Mumbai Apartment In Pretty Pastels

Good things come in small packages, they say. A statement that describes Candyland, a compact 516-square-foot Mumbai home completely. What’s more, true to its name, it is imbued with all the joy, lightness and sweetness that puts heart and soul in small spaces bound by four walls and a ceiling, transforming a mere shelter into a sanctuary, a home.

The visual expression is ruled by playful and vibrant aesthetics, aligned to the creative and fun-loving personalities of the young home-owners. While the aesthetic aspect is reminiscent of a candy wonderland, tell us interior designer Anam Taufik of AT Studio who helmed this project, “functionally, the compact home showcases an open-plan, loosely-structured layout that extracts the most from a tight footprint.” - Rupali Sebastian

Also read: A compact Mumbai home that exudes warm serenity

A 500-Square-Foot Parisian Apartment In Candy Colours

When he founded Zvya Studio, Anthony Authié‘s goal was to dispel the tired image that many people have of architects and architecture. With his experimental style, he wanted to introduce fun notions that refer to comics and that have decidedly kitschy elements. In breaking with conventions, he has created interior worlds that make you wonder whether they are even real, let alone spaces where one could live. “I have tried to incorporate a form of humour into my work, a little self-irony,” says Authié.

For French DJ Myd, architect Authié transformed a traditional 500-square-foot Hausmann apartment in Paris into a luminous, almost unreal, environment with music at its heart. To achieve this result, he drenched the small apartment in a baby blue paired with a touch of Candy Crush pink. The result is a refreshing and rather unusual “electro Hausmann apartment.” - Hannah Starauschek

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A 646-Square-Foot Apartment in Paris With Rich Solid-Coloured Walls And Dark Wood

“I love this project because the owner was immediately open to my suggestions and trusted me with everything,” says interior designer Lauranne Élise Schmitt. “He works in finance and has lived in London and Frankfurt, so he’s used to hushed, subdued atmospheres, like that found in a private English club. That's what inspired me.”

Before Schmitt could redesign this 646-square-foot space on rue Lamarck, in Montmartre, she demolished much of the existing unit. On the side facing the street, a partition was removed to create a living-dining-kitchen area. On the interior, courtyard side, a clean slate was also created. The corridor, which was taking up too much space, was reconfigured, and the old kitchen became a bedroom—or rather a principal suite—with two sliding glass doors on either side of the headboard that open onto the bathroom. - Nicolas Milon

This 800-Square-Foot Pune Home Is A Retro Dream

After having spent over ten years in Bombay, Gaurav Ogale made the decision to move back to his sleepy hometown. It was important to him to move into a smaller house blessed with ample sunlight. "As an artist who works primarily on themes of memory, nostalgia, and inheritance, I thrive in intimate spaces which allow me to dream, breathe, lay doing nothing, and sometimes, just be," he says.

“My relationship with spaces has always been very tactile, especially because I have moved many homes and always lived out of boxes,” Ogale tells us. “By osmosis, art and memories have travelled with me to all my homes, making space for themselves and settling in with me until it was time to move again. I have no memory of 'designing' a home; objects, art, and textiles organically made space for themselves in my spaces, big and small.” - Nuriyah Johar

A Colourful 420-Square-Foot Home In Kazakhstan

This playful 420-square-foot home in Kazakhstan was a bit of an outlier for interior designer Elina Mussakulova. “Usually, our clients aren’t involved in the design, but we worked as a team,” says the cofounder of boutique interiors studio Sdelaemremont.kz. “It was fun!”

The one-bedroom apartment, located in the heart of Almaty, Kazakhstan, belongs to a family of six who live about an hour outside the city. The couple’s three daughters (they also have a young son) attend school nearby and participate in oodles of extracurriculars—math, tennis, and more. “They wanted a stopover where they could hang out and relax for an hour or two between the end of the school day and their activities,” Elina explains. -Marni Elyse Katz