Inside A 30sqm Apartment With 5 Rooms—Thanks To Robot Furniture

Our homes are, as comedian George Carlin put it, just a place for our stuff. But what if, asks a new generation of startups, all that stuff could just…disappear?

Inventors, architects and designers all over the world have lately converged on ways to do just that. Their technology can make parts of apartments and homes, and all their contents, slide out of view at the touch of a button. Former researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ex-Apple and Tesla engineers toiling in San Francisco and a design and architectural firm in Spain are among those devising what can only be described as robotic furniture. And it’s already rolling off the factory floor and into the domiciles of students, church program directors and celebrity couples like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis.

These systems include beds that, on voice command, float into the ceiling to reveal couches, and artificial-intelligence enabled cameras to track where your belongings are stored.

For now, most of these playthings are for the rich, with some of these installations costing $65,000 for a single room. But the goal of many of the people involved is to make this technology ubiquitous. Some of these home systems can cost as little as $8,000 apiece and are already installed in apartments with rents as low as $1400 a month, in places like Durham, N.C. and Buffalo, N.Y.

The promise of robotic furniture is that it can turn single rooms into multipurpose spaces. To the extent that they work, they could help blunt the rise in what Americans pay for housing, and alter where they are able and willing to live.

It’s probably not a coincidence that this technology is breaking into the mainstream at a time that is not unlike the early 1900s, when America also faced housing problems. That era inspired William Murphy, who was living in cramped quarters in San Francisco, to invent the bed that shares his name and tucks away into a cabinet or wall.

The Murphy bed allowed a small apartment’s main living area to double as both bedroom and living room. It became a cultural touchstone in its time because there was a genuine need for more versatile furniture in small spaces.

Now again, as people spend more time at home, inventors are becoming creative about solving problems of cost and space.

A version of one such system, from Boston and New York City-based Ori, is already on the market and could eventually become more widespread thanks to a partnership with furniture behemoth IKEA in 2019, says Ori CEO Hasier Larrea. An IKEA spokesman confirmed the two companies are still working together on what has proved to be a “complex project.”

Push-button transformation

Here are the problems the leaders of robot furniture companies, and their partners, say they want to solve:

For decades, America hasn’t built enough housing to keep up with demand. And despite the pandemic’s flight to suburbs and small towns, demand for housing in America’s cities has continued to grow, with rents all over the country setting new records.

Americans are working anywhere but where they used to, and more often than not, at home. Office occupancy rates remain below 50% in much of the country.

So what’s a city-dwelling, part-time-working-from-home, cash-strapped millennial to do? The most obvious answers—find a tinier space or take in more roommates—are made more challenging by the rise of remote work, and everything that comes with it. The places we inhabit, once primarily where we started and ended our days, are becoming the places we spend most of our waking hours, and where we work, exercise and collaborate, putting a premium on every inch of living space.

This is where Ori comes in. Mr. Larrea began exploring the concept of living-bigger-with-less back in 2011 as a researcher at MIT’s City Science group. In 2015 he started Ori, and today the company’s motorized, moving furniture systems are in about 500 apartments in more than 30 U.S. cities, he says, with thousands more scheduled to be installed in the next two years.

The idea isn’t just to make small apartments feel bigger, but to make them more functional. That means clearing away furniture and storage when it’s not in use. What was once a bedroom can, in less than a minute, become a proper living room or home office.

Cities, where Ori’s robotic furniture has taken root, go beyond the usual suspects of New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, in part because apartments in desirable urban neighbourhoods have become relatively expensive in a growing number of cities in the U.S.

Take, for instance, Fort Worth, Texas. In a 54-unit building called CoHo Fort Worth, in a neighbourhood close to a medical campus and dense with bars and restaurants, 43 of the units are equipped with “Ori Pocket Studios.” Each of these is basically a giant piece of furniture that can glide to and fro on a small track installed along a wall. It includes an entertainment centre and shelves on one side, and reveals additional storage and a bed on the other. It responds to touch, voice, and an Ori-built app. It can be moved manually, too, should power fail.

These systems attempt to overcome shortcomings of prior efforts at hidden furniture through their design, and not just through automation, says Matt Bischoff, investment director at Watermark Equity Group, the company that built CoHo Fort Worth. For instance, unlike a Murphy bed, Ori’s beds don’t need tidying up before being stowed away.

“If somebody’s coming over, you can just push a button and you’re hiding your messy bedroom or closet,” says 31-year-old Kasi Bailey, whose part-time jobs include planning child and family programs at her church, and who moved into a studio in the CoHo building in late July. Her one concern about the apartment was that the technology would have problems, being so new, but so far she hasn’t had any issues, she adds.

All that comes with an average rent of $1,100 a month, compared with the typical $1450 a month for a studio in the area, says Mr. Bischoff. There’s a simple reason for that: CoHo Fort Worth apartments average 30sqm, whereas other studios in the area are around 600 square feet. By making better use of that smaller space, renters save, but Watermark also makes more per square foot on rent, adds Mr. Bischoff.

The smaller size of these apartments hasn’t been a deterrent to renters. The entire building, save two apartments, was fully leased within a month of finishing construction, a process that would normally take up to six months, says Mr. Bischoff.

Ori’s systems start at $8,000 for a “pocket closet” that expands in about 10 seconds from something the size of a large dresser into a space the size of a walk-in closet. Its “cloud bed,” which rises to the ceiling to reveal living space beneath, costs about $14,000.

Marie Kondo in your ceiling

If Ori is the IKEA of robotic furniture, then Bumblebee Spaces is its more-exclusive, luxury cousin. Staffed almost entirely by ex-Apple and Tesla employees, the company’s desks, beds, and storage options all reside in the ceiling of a living space. Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis are both investors in the company and have installed its systems in their home.

The company is focused not just on making rooms that clear themselves of clutter so you can do yoga, but also on creating software that catalogues everything you own.

Utter the phrase: “Bumblebee, give me my watch,” and a box will descend from the ceiling with your watch nestled within. It’s all thanks to cameras and artificial intelligence trained to catalogue hundreds of household objects, says Sankarshan Murthy, CEO of Bumblebee. Basically, you don’t have to remember where you put any of your stuff, he adds.

Bumblebee’s system, with over 100 now installed, requires a support structure and power system as well as sufficient ceiling height. This system starts at $14,000, while a fully tricked out room can cost as much as $37,000.

Furniturebots, assemble!

Madrid-based Beyome, which is owned by the same family as construction group Kimak, is gearing up to manufacture, at scale, the maximalist version of the transforming home. That system, dreamed up by architectural design firm (and partner company) Enorme Studio, requires a complete retrofit of a home. The result is entire walls that move, with built-in beds, tables, and the like. Imagine waking up in the morning, for example, and transforming two private bedrooms into a family room, or into a dining room plus a study, or a bedroom, dining room and study.

This approach was born of long experience with clients, says Rocío Pina, director of Enorme. In Spain about a third of all apartments and homes are less than 650 square feet, and are often shared by roommates or whole families. For these kinds of tenants, just maximizing the use of space isn’t enough. Privacy is key too, and just shifting furniture about within a room doesn’t grant that—only actual walls with proper doors.

That’s why Enorme opted for the extra expense and complexity involved in making whole walls move. The company has rolled out a handful of prototype units in Madrid, and has contracts to expand elsewhere.

Outfitting a home with the Enorme system is comparable to the cost of fully refitting and refurbishing an apartment in Spain—or about 1,000 euros per square meter, says Íñigo Moreno, CEO of Beyome.

Hardware is hard

These companies are the latest to test the field of “architectural robotics,” a term invented by Cornell professor Keith Evan Green. While Mr. Green is enthusiastic about the commercialization of the discipline he helped pioneer, he warns that the success of these startups is hardly a foregone conclusion. History is littered with companies that tried to make robots accessible to everyday users, from Rethink Robotics’ attempts to bring programmable “cobots” into small businesses to Jibo, which tried to bring a “social” robot into the home.

But should Ori, Bumblebee, Enorme and their future competitors succeed, Dr. Green’s research suggests it could spur broader changes in home living. Once people accept that their home can gain new capabilities, not unlike adding functions to a smartphone via a new app, they could be more willing to invite other kinds of digital enhancements into their homes, such as robots intended to allow the elderly to stay in their homes longer.

Techno-utopianism aside, it’s worth remembering the Murphy bed never really took off. Today it’s known mostly as a punchline in cartoons and a classic Charlie Chaplin scene. True to our founding principles, as soon as Americans can afford more space, they go for it. Today the median new home in America is 2½ times as large as at the turn of the previous century, when Mr. Murphy came up with his bed.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.