If you’re a musician yearning to record that ground-breaking album that you know will change the world (or at least propel your name into musical conversation) the good news is that you really don’t need the keys to Abbey Road in order to make it a reality. The equipment available to the modern home recording studio is many times more powerful than the old four-track that The Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on.
Creative Spaces
Better living in small spaces: Cooking Without a Kitchen
What do you do when you’re a passionate cook, but have an area approximately the size of a postage stamp to do your cooking? Miriam Nice, food writer and London-based foodie, has taken a rather a novel approach to the art of cooking in a less-than-comprehensively kitted out kitchen: contemplating what to do when you don’t have one at all.
Reimagining the phone box: a London design classic
The London Design Festival, held annually in September, never fails to showcase the best and most innovative new design here in London and the UK. While it’s always exciting to see what’s new and what’s cutting edge, there are certain pieces of design which are so iconic they are as as intertwined into British life as the Queen, tea or joining a queue just because it’s there and it would be rude not to.
Wallbeds: why haven’t they caught on in London?
Everybody’s seen them: the flats where communal areas have thriftily been omitted in favour of squeezing in another bedroom or two and increasing the rent. If bedrooms are supposed to be for sleeping, where are the people who inhabit those compact spaces supposed to do their living? This week, we’ve been thinking about one of the most efficient space-saving and multitasking bits of furniture: the wallbed.
From bedroom to brewery: How home brewing has become London’s new hobby
As regular readers will know, we’re all about better living in London’s small spaces. This week our roving reporter, Em Kuntze, set out for the Old Kent Rd Brewery to discover how a hobby that started in a bedroom is fast becoming a way to make a living.
Less is more: Capsule hotels, Kisho Kurokawa, and making the most of small spaces
In the hustle and bustle of a busy city even the most energetic of us sometimes need to stop and rest, and if you’ve ever missed the last train home (for whatever reason – we’re not judging), you’ll know this only too well.
The incredibly cool art of transforming tiny spaces
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re aware that London housing stock is a) expensive, b) not exactly spacious and c) in increasingly short supply.
The enduring appeal of the campervan
Better living in small spaces – that’s what we’re all about here on the Box Room blog. So, with the summer heat on high and the urge to escape running riot in offices across the capital, Em Kuntze explores better holidaying in small vans – the humble campervan, to be precise.
Home office solutions for small spaces
A report out last week revealed that 21% of Londoners are now freelancers and another, from the Office for National Statistics last year, reported that 13.9% of people in work were based at home. Given what we know about the housing situation in London, it’s pretty safe to assume that a lot of that workforce are likely to be working cheek-by-jowl - at least some of the time - with flatmates, partners and the distractions that come with these things.
Gardens for apartment dwellers: exploring indoor gardening
‘Gardens,’ said Rudyard Kipling, ‘are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade’. We’ve no doubt this is true: we are British after all, and if we believe what’s said about us, we are the nation of gardeners.
The history of the man cave
The humble man cave may seem like a particularly modern dwelling, but in one form or another, it has been around for some time. Ahead of our search for London’s ultimate man cave (watch this space!), we’ve been rummaging through the library books and digging out the true history of the man cave. We’ll be skipping cave dwellers, as they’re a little difficult to pinpoint (and a bit too obvious), so let us begin by taking an enlightened jump straight back to the dark ages.
From she sheds to shedquarters – a cosy place to call your own
Whether it’s a room for crafting, a reading nook comprising a favourite chair and a good lamp or a shed full of tools, it’s not just men that need their boltholes. Bruce Wayne may have built his first man cave way back in 1943, but it seems only recently that women have laid claim to a small area of their own on a larger scale (hush now with your jokes about kitchens and so forth).