The idea of it is quite simple. When you pull up to the apartment building, at 200 Eleventh Avenue in New York, NY, the garage will automatically identify who you are and which apartment your car belongs to. After driving into the elevator, the lift will transport your car to the floor you live on, and will then allow you to pull forward into your own garage (attached to your apartment). Voila—you, and your car, are now two steps away from your living area. A steal at $US3 million dollars. (You can’t put a price on this kind of car convenience in Manhattan.) [200 Eleventh Avenue via Core77 via DVice]

[Apartment Therapy via Core77]

You can think about the Eco-Neighbuzz as a way to build a local Facebook in your own building. Neighbours would be able to drop messages into your unit and viceversa, enabling an ongoing communication with the people around you, and opening the possibilities to collaboration between everyone in the building. As designer Korhan Buyukdemirci explains:

Eco-neighbuzz is an apartment buzzer & intercom system with additional features. Today’s existing intercom systems work only between outside door and flat. However, we can improve this system to support the existing community inside the building. Even though today we are living in tall concrete blocks built in big metropolises, we are not communicating with our neighbours as we did years ago. Sometimes we even don’t know who is living in the building and what they are doing.

It’s a good idea. On one side I like this building community system, but do we really need to blow one of the few opportunities we have to interact with humans face to face? And even if we agree that this could help communication, I don’t know if people would be interested in doing it. Example: I know that the four hot girls next door won’t be happy about me stalking them via intercom messages too. [Core77]

Chang has lived in this apartment since he was 14, moving in with his parents and three younger sisters. Back then, he used to sleep in the hallway. Now, he uses a hydraulic Murphy bed that he designed himself, which is usually hidden behind a sofa during the day.

Turning his apartment into what he’s named a “Domestic Transformer” hasn’t been cheap. It only cost $US45,000 to buy, but his latest design efforts came with a $US218,000 price tag.

Still, his experiment in small living is incredibly cool. Personally, if I had a quarter million to play with, I’d much rather spend it optimising something creatively rather than on another boring McMansion. [NYtimes]

Over 2.1m tall and 1.8m wide, the Armoire Kitchen is just that, a kitchen subtly hidden inside giant wooden casing. Somehow, magically maybe, it still manages to squeeze in one mini Subzero fridge, two electric burners, a sink, microwave (upgradable with convection functions) and a single drawer dishwasher along with, sadly, about as much storage space as I have in my tiny apartment kitchen.

At a starting price of $US9300 (as pictured), the Armoire Kitchen may not seem like a budget purchase. But compared to installing an actual kitchen, it’s basically free. [YesterTec via Small Space Living]

Yep, still queasy, though I’d get over it pretty quick to live in one those apartments. [BIG via Dezeen]

Yeah, yikes. If anyone goes for custom glass flooring, there better be plenty of airsickness bags on hand. The building, which will be built in Tribeca at 56 Leonard Street, uses extreme cantilevers to achieve a look that H&M describe as “pixelated vertical layering.” Or, stacked shanty town trailers.

Herzog and de Meuron designed just about every aspect of the interiors as well, from the 12-foot glass doors that open out onto your private deck, the massive floor-to-ceiling fireplaces–even the coloring of the individual interior elements. If you want to live in an apartment designed by the same folks that brought us one of the coolest works of architecture of the 20th century (and you’ve got US$3.5 mil for a small, low shanty or US$33 mil for a top shanty), this is your place.

[Gothamist]