Minimal but Magnificent

New Small Homes offers examples that demonstrate how to make the most of any living space, whether in a loft, apartment, single-family home, bungalow or cabin. Click on image for larger view.

Sleek, streamlined and more than a little uncomfortable looking, the homes featured in New Small Homes by Aurora Cuito (Watson Guptill Publishing) are not typically the homes you see when visiting friends or family. They are the homes that only the most creative could imagine making into homes: a prefabricated box in the countryside, the ground floor of a former textile factory and an abandoned water tank.

The book uses these examples and others to present sleek, minimalist, modern homes that feature partition walls on wheels, moveable closets or sliding doors to diversify homes. Located in remote corners of Prague, Stockholm and Milan, they seem large despite their tiny spaces. They were selected for being less than 1,000 square feet of space. Skylights and huge windows help to maximize the space.

Few people would imagine these places becoming comfy homes, but by the miracles of architecture, the tiny homes become visually appealing but remain difficult to imagine actually living in.

Still, a few useful tips can be culled from page after page of detailed illustration. A few: Use light to make tiny spaces seem large. White can also make a tiny kitchen look large, and creative storage techniques--such as cabinets under the stairwell can help maximize the use of space.