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My Houzz: Ultimate Live-Work Space Adapts to the Needs of the Day
Incredibly flexible and playful to boot, this 720-square-foot Montreal apartment and office expresses its creative side
I am an architecture student that has always had a keen interest in photography. Currently doing freelance work in both art and architecture, I'm always on the search for inspiring spaces.
I am an architecture student that has always had a keen interest in photography.... More »
For designer Aboudi Hassoune, the design of his home started with a simple question: "Why should our environments remain static when we are constantly changing and evolving?"
After Hassoune started his own design practice, Abnorm Studio, the need for a workspace quickly became apparent. In 2011, with very limited means, he decided on a small rental unit centrally located in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. The task: Turn this small apartment into an office and a home that expresses his personality and design sense.
Hassoune transformed his 720-square-foot space into a myriad of alternative configurations. Custom and stock furniture pieces are creatively placed in relation to one another, allowing the large main room to be an office, a lounge, a large dining room and a walk-in closet, all in one.
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Aboudi Hassoune and Kurt-James Dexter Kaulbach
Location: Montreal
Size: 720 square feet; 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
That’s interesting: The same light reflectors used on a table are also used in the drop ceiling. This allows Hassoune to switch up the drop ceiling with interchangeable images.
After Hassoune started his own design practice, Abnorm Studio, the need for a workspace quickly became apparent. In 2011, with very limited means, he decided on a small rental unit centrally located in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. The task: Turn this small apartment into an office and a home that expresses his personality and design sense.
Hassoune transformed his 720-square-foot space into a myriad of alternative configurations. Custom and stock furniture pieces are creatively placed in relation to one another, allowing the large main room to be an office, a lounge, a large dining room and a walk-in closet, all in one.
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Aboudi Hassoune and Kurt-James Dexter Kaulbach
Location: Montreal
Size: 720 square feet; 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
That’s interesting: The same light reflectors used on a table are also used in the drop ceiling. This allows Hassoune to switch up the drop ceiling with interchangeable images.
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by Emily Campbell
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| The brightly lit apartment is basically one large, open room. Flexible and mobile furniture, colorful books, toys and multipurpose spaces give it a playful feeling. Usually the main room is divided into three spaces: lounge/living room, storage and office. But when the occasion presents itself, a library wall can be pushed back and to transform the room into a large area appropriate for a dinner party, movie watching or game playing, centering around a ping-pong table made with wood tables and a homemade net. |
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| The furniture can be combined and reconfigured with custom cushions to provide lounge seating for up to 30 people. Movable foam tiles from a dollar store interlock in different configurations to define distinct spaces for lounging on the floor. The custom-designed upholstered pads are a recent addition. With standard dimensions, every piece of furniture in the apartment can work together. For example, these cushions can be added to the top of the worktable to create a multilevel lounging area. |
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by Emily Campbell
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| Two large tables made of standard plywood and lumber provide a surface for working, meeting or dining. When the area is set up like a formal office, beanbags from Neon are used to maintain the apartment's playful and casual attitude. |
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| The back wall is covered in slats similar to wall coverings in a clothing shop. Stock hardware holds shelves, magazines and spare chairs. The slats allow this wall to adapt quickly and easily. When the space is arranged as an office, traces of home life are concealed. Shelf: Expedit, Ikea |
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To maximize the space, Hassoune made sure everything has multiple uses. In addition to providing storage and display space, the slat wall conceals the bedroom doors. In a similar fashion, the sliding door for the stacked washer and dryer serves as a whiteboard.
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by Emily Campbell
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| Both doors to the bedroom open inward. This allows Hassoune to place furniture in front of the doors when guests are over. |
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The entry to the apartment is flanked by two functional spaces: the kitchen and the storage area, finished in black and dark gray. The color choices contrast with the light and playful feeling of the rest of the apartment. Juxtaposing the dark and light areas exaggerates the size of the light spaces. The lack of walls between the dark spaces and the main room keeps the kitchen and storage areas from feeling small.
by Emily Campbell
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Hassoune rents his apartment, so he kept alterations to the kitchen design to a minimum. The cupboards were painted with chalkboard paint to visually unify the kitchen — and offer a fun way to label their contents. (Other doodles and drawings sometimes find their way onto the cabinets, too.) Hassoune covered the laminate countertops with wood cutting boards from Ikea.
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by Emily Campbell
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| The storage area is a narrow space enclosed by full-height closets on both sides. They were an investment, but Hassoune can take them with him if he moves. |
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The library unit divides the storage area from the rest of the space. It is a closet on one side and bookshelves and display space on the other. The library unit is on wheels, allowing the room to be partitioned in various ways. This movement allows Hassoune and his roommate to change the size and function of the space, continuing with the dynamic theme of the apartment.
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by Emily Campbell
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| There is no formal dining room in this creative and casual apartment. When needed, the main space can turn into a dining room for up to 16 people. But usually there are only a few people eating at a time. For everyday dining, Hassoune dressed up a counter-height table from Ikea with colorful paint swatches. A layer of glass helps to keep the swatches in place and protect them from spills. The glass is raised with an aluminum reflector that is usually found in fluorescent lighting. Like many things in the apartment, the swatches can be swapped out. |
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One of Hassoune's favorite pieces is his custom "flying carpet" coffee table. Drawing from his Middle Eastern heritage, he put a playful, custom-built spin on the Persian rug. The carpet rests on a plywood surface that can be easily removed.
by Emily Campbell
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The base is a smaller wood coffee table on wheels. The built-in wine cooler is made of a plastic bar container for ice and two metal wine chillers for holding the bottles. These pieces can be bought from any restaurant supply store as an inexpensive solution to keep drinks cold and on hand.
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by Emily Campbell
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| Hassoune shares his apartment with writer Kurt-James Dexter Kaulbach, and during the workday with his associate Bella Astor. The two roommates continue to come up with unique configurations for their creative live-work space. Houzz call: Share your creative apartment with us. It could be featured on Houzz! |
Ideabook updated on Aug. 22, 2012.
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The flying carpet coffee table is a beautiful touch. The moveable storage solutions are practical, and what a good idea to label the chalkboard-painted cabinets, etc. so that your company knows where to find stuff!
700 square feet is about the size I would like to downsize to eventually as I get older. Less really is more in many ways: living more simplistically and reducing yard work so that one can spend time on other priorities.
Congratulations on this lovely space.
Best wishes,
Thank you for your responses which I read with interest.
I love that the colour scheme is "as is".....I prefer it to colour coordination. It's more personal. I love the flying carpet especially in the shot where it looks like it really is flying !
I don't really see how "setting up and taking down" are problems, since the article states that the gentlemen don't have large numbers of people dining with them all the time.
I live in a small house with an extendable dining room table. I only stretch it out occasionally when I have special dinners. That's not very hard. I prefer "sit down" dinners.
My living room only has seating for six, two love seats and two chairs, so we have to sit at the table. Nobody has complained about that yet, and I don't notice people leaving early.
Best wishes,
My problem is how to make this possible for the more private upstairs bedroom area to accommodate either a couple (also with very small children) for whom permanent walls are of zero/little consequence and where mobile vertical partitions solve most of the problems when/if needed (guests) v. (when selling house) how to create the option for separate bedrooms for a family with 1 or more older children? Any ideas?
One more comment: movable verticals are brutal on carpeted floors. Tiles or wood floors are far more tolerant.
It would be helpful if you could sketch a floor plan for the upstairs and measurements.
Best wishes,
I'm sorry I wasn't more specific.
I have recently decided to raze my current home and rebuild it from scratch. Something I should have done after I had bought the house. At the moment I'm collecting ideas.
Yes, my new home will have an upstairs and I'm hoping I'll be able to do without weight bearing walls, too. I have visited a fair number of online makers of folding walls, but as of yet I haven't seen anything with the 'Wow' factor.
Oh, and major thanks for your response. What a lovely surprise! The question was borderline rhetorical.