Matroshka – Extremely Compact Furniture for Compact Living

Living in a tight single, student or commuter apartment? Always confronted with furniture dilemmas such as: "I can place this or that here…but not both"? Want to invite some people over instead of spending money in a restaurant or pub (it is a recession, you know), but don't have room for all the chairs you'll need? Well, it's not only IKEA that has creative solutions – here's a preview of the ingenious, space-saving Matroshka furniture concept.

Why It’s Clever

Do you remember those Russian matryoshka dolls that are stored inside each other? This great furniture design follows the same principles. Components that aren't needed at any given time are slid or placed inside another component, so they don't use up your precious space. Even the seats themselves pull double duty as storage boxes.

When you have a few guests, you simply slide out an extra part of the sofa.

People coming for a quick dinner? Get those seats from under the bed and convert the sofa table into a dinner table.

Time for a dance? Place everything inside each other and put on your dancing shoes.

Everybody gone? Slide out the double bed, take your pillow and blankets out of the sofa and try not to worry about the pile of dirty dishes – those can wait inside your "kitchen in a closet" ;-)

The design is the work of a group of Swedish design students. Not IKEA, but still Swedish – do they all live in small houses and apartments over there?

Summary

Extremely compact furniture solution for tight living spaces
In numbers: Bookshelf + Double bed + Sofa + Four stools (12 seats altogether) + Dinner table + Sofa table + Workplace + Wardrobe + Cleaning products box + Drawer + Folder storage all on 40 square feet (4 square meters)

Tips

Another very nice matryoshka-like design are the chairs from Puur Design Studio. I can be wrong, but I have the impression that budget was not the first concern when designing these.

Chairs from Puur Design Studio