It’s a loft with not an inch to spare

Small Lofts

Alejandro Bahamon

Collins Design; $19.95

A loft is, by definition, an open and airy space. These days, it’s a vestigial one, a huge area once used to manufacture products now made much less expensively somewhere else. This leaves us with a planet full of urban buildings with incredibly high ceilings, no interior walls, built of what the author calls “solid and noble” materials: brick, iron, wood.

Lofts first became popular when Manhattan’s starving young artists took up illegal residence in the city’s vast abandoned warehouses and factories, and turned them into a hot and happening residential trend. As urban living space has become increasingly more precious, the very size of lofts offered for rent and for sale has dwindled until we now have the unique phenomenon that is the subject (and title) of this book: the small loft.

Each of the 25 converted spaces on four continents shown here is extraordinary for its creative and often witty design approach. The smallest, at 172 square feet, is a former doorman’s room in a Paris building. The owner, a young architect, has devised ingenious ways to make every spare inch count. That includes a staircase of bent metal sheet that serves as a sculpture as well as the entry to his sleeping loft.

A large whitewashed loft (1,398 square feet) in Barcelona, Spain, is defined by a red wood panel that slides on a metal rail, a movable wall to divide the space for different uses at different times of day.

A New York loft, 645 square feet in a former parking structure, is perfect for a couple whose sleeping pods are huge tanks, originally used to transport gas, suspended from the ceiling.

This little book is mysteriously compelling. Many of the lofts are architect owned and designed, and the specifics of their work are not reproducible (or easily affordable). But each loft offers unexpected insights into inventive spatial design -- ideas that might enhance even the traditional dwellings of those who couldn’t care less about lofts.

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Easy on the eye and the wallet

Great Houses on a Budget

James Grayson Trulove

Harper Design; $29.95

The title says it all. The 16 houses presented here were built with budget constraints that prevented use of expensive or custom-sized materials that would boost the cost. Yet the homes, all essentially simple and modern, have a kind of aesthetic integrity that comes precisely from their lack of pretense and pomposity.

The home on Lillian Way in Los Angeles, for example, was a dark, two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot bungalow reconfigured into a stunning, light filled, loft-like space. With interior walls and the dropped ceiling removed, architect Aleks Istanbullu used the pitched roof as the ceiling. Instead of adding costly windows, the architect created a central skylight that bathes the entire open space with light. A storage wall of maple plywood does not reach the ceiling, yet divides the space as effectively as if it did.

In Venice, architect Steven Ehrlich created a house on a concrete slab that is clad in rusted steel, inside and out. Throughout the book, creative use of unexpected materials brings down the price but brings up the style quotient. Glass garage doors replace sliders or French doors; inexpensive windows typically used in storefronts are translated for residential use.

Particularly useful is the author’s detailed information about various materials that are durable and inexpensive, and can be purchased in common sizes for use in interiors and exteriors.

Also interesting is the wide variety of handsome yet affordable wood products used to elegant effect in floors, walls and cabinets. Abundant photographs of each house, and blueprints for each, are included in this idea-filled book.

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Gilding the lily in the Southwest

The New Southwest Home

Suzanne Pickett Martinson

Northland Publishing; $34.95

If your idea of the new Southwest home is one that’s the size of San Simeon, or maybe Mar-a-Lago, and if you love the overstuffed, over-carved and over-embellished way of life, this book is for you. The floors, the walls, the furniture seem to be high ticket and high maintenance -- and about as far as one can get from the simple verities of Southwest life. Everything is undeniably comfortable: sofas you can sink into; chandeliers and sconces that shed lovely light; baths fit for modern Cleopatras; faux finishes; marble floors. Simplicity is not the goal here, and those who like their lilies gilded will appreciate this book.