“A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place”: How Architect Daniel Dorall Lives Small
Architect and artist Daniel Dorall has a lot of things – even if he doesn’t like to think so. “I am not a maximalist”, he tells Never Too Small Founder Colin Chee, who playfully objects: “You are actually quite maximalist”. But it’s easy to see where Dorall is coming from. Though Dorall is an avid collector of art, objects, and books, his compact condo in Melbourne feels open and uncluttered. It traces back to his faith in the philosophy of a place for everything, and everything in its place: “If everything’s in its place and in harmony and composition, that’s when it really becomes a home for me”.
Dorall’s Space-saving Hacks
Composition is a word Dorall uses often when describing how he’s gone about attuning his environment to his liking. “I think that comes from my architectural training”, he offers. “All the classical notions of hierarchy, symmetry, and perspective are quite important when you have lots of things but you don’t want to make it look cluttered”. And while this is good and true, there’s more meat to Dorall’s success: it’s also a product of time and openness – to both change and new ideas. Dorall has lived in his space for over a decade, tweaking layouts, discovering a secret studio (more on this shortly), and inventing many space-saving hacks along the way.
To list all of Dorall’s tricks would take too long, so we’ve amassed a list of some of our favourites, including: the pull-out drawer for hiding the dish rack; the metal plate on the inside of a cabinet door for magnetic spice holders; the framed art on a hinge for hiding light switches and a controller; the hole in the rear of a cupboard for tucking the vacuum behind the microwave; and the IKEA hooks-turned-wine rack in the narrow niche between the fridge and the wall. Again, only to name a few.
Perhaps the biggest space saving (or space creating) hack of them all, though, is Dorall’s home studio in the “attic” above his bedroom and bathroom. Accessed by a pull down ladder from the ceiling, Dorall explained how he “excavated” the space after a plumber discovered over two metres of additional height while investigating a leak from the upstairs neighbour. Dorall seized the opportunity, moving some pipes aside to convert it into a mini artist studio with a workbench and drawers for storage. A small cut out brings in natural light and ventilation from the bedroom while doubling as a place to tuck his legs while sitting at the desk.
“It’s just me and my collection in here right now”
Dorall’s home is the definition of small but mighty. Whether he’s a maximalist or minimalist, Dorall is happy with the amount of space – believing in finding solutions to make it work rather than expanding for the sake of it: “It’s just me and my collection in here right now. A single person living in a space, you really don’t need more than 40 square metres”. He continued, “50 sqm is great, anything more than that is really really great”.
Artworks mentioned in Epsiode:
- Large Black Painting in Living Room: Royal Enclosure - Painting For A Republic, 2004, velvet, synthetic polymer paint, enamel and plastic on linen, diptych, 200 x 200cm by Janenne Eaton https://www.janenneeaton.com.au/
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