Solutions for small-scale living: Inside a pocket-sized Richmond apartment

Fun fact about architect Jack Chen: he is a neat freak. He sweated over the super-fine details to make his Richmond apartment work like a big house in a petite package.

Chen is also dedicated to the international smaller-house movement, and explains on the website of his new solo practice, Tsai Design, how much he enjoys experimenting with “unique, individual solutions” to architectural puzzles.

When he bought this pocket-sized, top-floor unit in a 1970s walk-up block, he bought a terrific laboratory for experimentation.

But he did come to the task with some ready formed ideas about how he would make its 35 square metres not feel like a constriction zone. For a year before, Chen had been renting a similar-sized flat on the ground floor of the same building, and, as design professionals do, had been musing on the various things he might do to make it more functional and comfortable if he owned it.

Moving upstairs, “I had my chance to give it a go.’’

The flat has one bedroom, a galley kitchen and a small bathroom. Armed with computer-modelled ideas that he thought would work in the 4.5 metre x 7-metre area, Chen had the luck to find a master cabinetmaker with experience in luxury hotel projects.

Lee Cabinets “introduced a lot more complexity that I’d originally imagined” Chen says, and, as the project proceeded, the pair found more and more clever ways of making every last millimetre in the flat work.

Complexity made streamlined is the essence of what Chen has achieved in a space barely larger than a studio.

In his beautifully appointed flat, so many of the useful pieces: dining table, desk, television cabinetry, the “switchable glass” bathroom wall (either opaque or clear), almost invisible storage and even the open-faced closet space behind the entry door, is multi-purpose.

And ensconced in his ingenious micro abode, with engineered oak to make it warm and to designate spatial use, he can sit for hours in the window seat, reading or looking out.

“I know that living in a small space can work, and I can see myself being here for a while, because I enjoy it,” Chen says.

“I’m comfortable.’’