Under 500 Square Feet: Inside 7 Tiny Yet Chic Spaces | Architectural Digest

“Since my childhood, I’ve been passionate about textures and colors,” interior designer Hugo Toro says. “My double culture with a French father and a Mexican mother, and my studies between Europe and the United States, are my main sources of inspiration. I like cozy places. I don’t want to live or create spaces that look and feel like museums.”

The young creative reflected these references and philosophy in his apartment, which is located in the lively and booming 10th arrondissement in the east of Paris. “It is a neighborhood in transformation, which is full of life, with coffee shops and young people all over,” Hugo says.

Located on the second floor of a three-story 1930s building, the 334-square-foot apartment was completely transformed. “I wanted to create an atypical and eclectic place, as if it were a travel diary,” the designer says. —Karine Monié

Decorating the space wasn’t a solitary effort. Acclaimed Italian architect and designer Antonio Pio Saracino hung all of the art in the apartment, including his drawing, which is the original drawing for the permanent sculpture in Bryant Park called Hero. Michael Arguello was the interior designer for this project and for Erica’s previous residences as well. He helped her conceptualize the gallery wall for all the pieces she had selected to display, something that has and likely will transform over time with the addition of new works.

Photo: Max Burkhalter

Walking into Erica Boginsky’s 394-square-foot Chelsea studio apartment is transportive in the way that walking into an art gallery can be. Which makes sense; Erica is the director of sales at Chelsea’s preeminent contemporary design gallery, Friedman Benda. And her home is a gallery you can live in: Upon entrance, you’ll see a painting by Daniel Aron (“This is actually his own language that he depicted”), a bright blue bag from Fendi’s Eyes collection, and a wood Kaws sculpture.

Erica found the place by chance, or perhaps by fate; a few years ago, she’d already put in the deposit for a different apartment, when she walked by the prewar building she now resides in. “I thought that it was kind of quaint and cute,” she says. “It didn’t seem too big. And I walked in and I asked them, which is not usually how it’s done.” —Katja Vujić