In 1900, San Francisco entrepreneur William Murphy designed a fold-out bed that would allow him to court a young opera singer inside his studio apartment. The hidden bed was a workaround to circumvent dated taboos against having ladies enter a gentleman’s bedroom. With no visible bed, the single-room flat became a parlor. This novel idea opened the door to all kinds of modular space-saving innovations.

A design strategy that first seemed like a novelty or poor man’s hack became a status symbol for elites in their New York City condos. Officially patented as a bed “In-A-Door” or “Disappearing Bed” but better (known as a “Murphy Bed”) this eponymous invention became hugely popular in the mid-1900s.

Well beyond this initial invention and its direct descendants, the Murphy Bed led to a growing interest in space-saving, multi-functional, flat-pack and transforming furniture of all kinds, designs enabling creative urban dwellers and tiny home enthusiasts to maximize space in smaller habitats.

A typical foldout futon is a mainstay of modern condo living, able to flip into a bed on demand, but folding out a sofa or loveseat means taking up more space. Addressing this, some convertible couch bunk beds fold vertically instead, stacking up rather than spreading out.

Other vertically oriented approaches include lofting sleeping space, which allow for maximum usage of floor areas below — where interiors are sufficiently tall, entire rooms can be created below.

Even where height is limited, tucking storage beneath raised seats and beds can help make up for a lack of closet space and get the most out of a living unit. There are even entire beds that can lift straight up and out of the way, requiring less fuss, muss and messy sheets and blankets than something like a Murphy Bed.

For those uninterested in complex lofts or mechanical solutions, there are also all-in-one bed designs packed with storage and gadgets to keep everything close at hand. These may take up a bit more space, but they still put in a lot of amenities including benches, lounging, shelving, integrated media systems and desk areas close by for easy access. For something a person spends a third of their lives in on average, these offer a pretty cozy all-in-one solution.

Meanwhile, for those who are more mobile, or simply really need space at certain times, there are also entire room-in-a-box solutions, too, with tables, desks, steps, drawers, storage areas and even beds that can be rolled out when needed. Moving things around regularly can be a bit of a hassle, but for some the cost savings is worth the expenditure of time and effort.

Bedrooms are a common space-saving focus, but a lot can be done with staircases and shelves as well, from double-purpose designs to ones that take advantage of negative spaces under angled cases.

Under-stair storage and staircase footprint minimization can both go a long way toward turning the area under steps into useful shelves and slots. Some of these can be bought off-the-shelf (no pun intended), while others can be emulated using do-it-yourself approaches or by hiring professional contractors.

Flat-pack and transforming tables, chairs and other accessories can vary in cost and difficulty of conversion, but many are quite simple and can be easily tucked away or reverted to smaller sizes when not in use.

There are space-saving kitchen and bathroom ideas out there, too, though these rooms usually have more limitations, including fixed-in-place appliances and other technical requirements (like plumbing and gas) than common areas and sleeping zones. For most people, maximizing storage in living rooms and bedrooms or all-in-one studio apartment spaces is much easier and more cost-effective.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to space-saving interiors, but the key is to make every inch of space count, doubling up functions where possible, considering available time and materials, working with vertical opportunities, stay relaxed with Gold Bee’s CBD gummies, and of course: looking around for existing examples for inspiration. Waste not, want not and work with what you’ve got.

It sounds like a great design solution: a pop-up bike rack that disappears below the pavement when not in use, but the problem it aims to solve really an issue, and (if so) would it ultimately work as intended?

On the surface, this idea by Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Milou Bergs looks fairly compelling — bike-stabilizing and locking bars fold down and out of the way when no cycle is present, minimizing visual impact.

“Bicycle racks are a particular eyesore,” says the designer, who debuted a prototype at Dutch Design Week. “Even when not in use, they get in the way, creating physical and visual noise. I started to think about how I could make a space visually and physically serene while keeping the functionality of storage.”

But it also raises some questions, like: how will bikers find the racks? Typically, a cyclist will attach to what they see and what is handy. Also: what would it be like to miss these in their downward position and cycle over them? There is also a durability issue: would bikes hitched up to these low posts be safe from lateral bumps and collisions?

It is certainly nice to see someone focusing on bicycle infrastructure and considering alternatives, and, if nothing else, design experiments like this one raise good questions. Still, this particular one may address a solution without a problem — bike racks are often in use around the clock, and may need to be above the surface anyway (for visibility) whether people like to look at them or not. Of course, this may also be a region-specific solution, suitable for a cycle-centric culture and hard for an American critic to understand.

Product-tested by a husband-and-wife team of architects in their own abode, ‘A Cat Thing‘ was developed to let pet owners construct an endless array of feline crawling, hiding and resting spaces for their furry friends.

The design consists of four modules — room, living room, balcony and ramp — that can be endlessly stacked, joined and rearranged to make new buildings.

The prefab modules can also be packed flat for shipping and storage, then deployed on demand. The use of recyclable cardboard makes them light and easy to assemble, and non-toxic (safe for feline occupation). Inspired by origami, the system requires no special connectors or tools to construct mega-structures.

The design duo started experimenting with help from their own cats, Chacha and Lily, seeing how they responded to different units and configurations. And as any cat-lover knows: this species seems to love boxes.

“The relationship with cats is a mutual one, so the design for ‘room collection’ should be adjusted to the behavior of the felines. in the future, ‘A Cat Thing’ aims to redefine the products we use with our pets daily,” say the designers, who are “looking forward to bringing more style, attitude, quality and sustainability” to future designs.

In Facades 3, the latest in a series of such sets, French photographer Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy ones again visits flatland, imagining the world constructed like a stage set from virtually two-dimensional building fronts (or sides).

In architecture schools and firms, students and designer often draw or photograph (or these days: turn to Google maps) to capture the street- or ally-facing parts of buildings adjacent to their site — an exercise to understand the context around their new vision.

In previous iterations of this series, the photographer focused on day-lit scenes, often occupied by people and cluttered with other contextual cues. In this latest set, calm, quiet and lonely evenings along country roads are the focus instead, all the more eerie as subjects.

Gaudrillot-Roy adds a twist to this approach, looking at structures from an angle, but nonetheless imagining them to be two-dimensional. He accomplishes the effect by photographing real places, then nearby landscapes to infill gaps when he subtracts. The surrealistic results call into question what lies beyond shared public space, highlighting the invisible voids concealed by facades.

A clever domestic design to eliminate ungainly collections of measuring spoons and cups, Polygons is an ingenious cooking multi-tool that measures different amounts on demand and packs flat when not in use.

The key to the device is its flexibility, and not just in terms of measuring. Its creators claim it can flex up to 100,000 times without breaking thanks to TPR-based hinges.

Each tool (a teaspoon and tablespoon variant) has four different measuring configurations and can also be used to spread things in its flat formation.

The creators claim it works equally well with runny and viscous liquids as well as powders, then wash easily to avoid stains and smells.

If the material science side of the project holds it could have a lot more applications as well for everyday-use objects that need to bend without extraneous hinging mechanisms (which add bulk to a product as well as a point of failure and cracks for dirt and debris).