Graham Hill is the founder of treehugger.com – and his life is all about editing. But not the kind of editing you think – it has nothing to do with words on the page. Hill is a “life editor.”

From tenement to tiny house

In 2010 he purchased two apartments in a 100-year-old former tenement building in Soho. And by 2012 he was ready to show them off to the world as an example of “tiny living.”

In other words, the way you live if you “edit” your life down to your basic needs plus a few chosen luxuries or things that make you happy.

The idea of editing your space was reborn again with Marie Kondo, but she was working with people who had plenty of room and too much clutter.

Small space, big aspirations

Hill, on the other hand, had 420 square feet to work with.

But just because Hill “edits” everything from his belongings to his friendships doesn’t mean he goes without. In fact, he appears to be living large!

His wishlist for one of the 420-square-foot spaces included a place where he could have dinner parties for 12, allow a guest to sleep over, have a home office, and even set up a projector for a home theater. That’s a tall order!

He rather brilliantly outsourced the design by turning it into a design competition. And by the time the call for entries was up, over 300 people had applied to be his personal architect. The winners were two Romanian architecture students (Catalin Sandu and Adrian Iancu) and their design “One Size Fits All.”

The apartment project is named LifeEdited (as is Hill’s company) and while it certainly is an accomplishment, it’s still a tiny space. The key was to have the possibility of opening the 420 square feet for entertainment while closing off spaces for other, more practical, functions (like sleep and work).

All the bells and whistles

If you’ve ever seen a tiny home you know storage space is key and all sorts of goodies are packed away in LifeEdited. Hill says the apartment has “the functionality of 1,100 square feet.”

That’s because everything folds away – from beds to the walls themselves. All said, he can create 6 rooms: a living room, dining room, office, guest office, master bedroom, and guest bedroom.

The kitchen and bathroom also “morph” into a phone booth (which is an interesting choice) and a meditation room.

But the key was knocking down all the walls and using floating furniture to create and continually reimagine the space.

Still, with so little space, it’s impressive to see the potential for privacy just between the two bedrooms alone (neither of which needs to be a bedroom during the day.

Moving walls and Murphy beds cost a lot though and Hill acknowledges that his plan is going to be in an unreasonable price range for anyone needing to watch their budget. But he’s open to people finding ways to hack his ideas.

Of course, don’t expect to pull this off if you’re someone who loves to cook or luxuriate in long baths – those two rooms took a big hit and are largely the bare minimum of what they need to be.

But there’s enough room to host that dinner party!

Be sure to scroll down below as Hill opens and closes each little space to give viewers an idea of just how he pulled off making a mere 420 square feet into a real living space.

Who knows, maybe you’ll see an idea or two that applies to you and your own space (no matter what its size).

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Source: YouTube – Kirsten Dirksen, Fair Company