Steve Sauer, Seattle resident and Boeing aircraft interior designer, was simply looking for some storage space when he found the tiny room that would become his home. But at just 182 square feet, these DIY living quarters required a decade of work, countless hours of wrangling with city planners, and just about all of Sauer's engineering expertise.


Fair Companies recently toured the micro-apartment, dubbed the "pico dwelling," with Sauer offering insights into his design process. "When I very first started designing this thing and started thinking about it, I was thinking 'bicycle messenger:' a 22-year-old bicycle messenger with eight pieces of clothing and a bicycle and almost nothing else, just living in the city," he explained.

Moreover, he said, "I like pushing the limit to see what I can do with the smallest kind of thing, I guess, in all ways. I guess being an engineer I like pushing the limits of efficiency all over the place. It's just interesting to me." Indeed, the way he was able to not only design but build virtually everything himself, mostly using re-purposed IKEA tables, is some Tony Stark level genius. [CurbedSF]