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Some of the coolest homes, in my opinion, are the ones that pack in tons of functionality without sacrificing an inch of style. Dining rooms are one of the hardest spots in a home to do this in though, because once you’ve settled on chairs and a table, there’s not much more room, literally, for much creativity. If you’re totally lacking a standalone dining room, the task becomes even trickier. Luckily, you can carve a flexible dining area out of thin air in a living room or other open space by using an unconventional piece of furniture, that is, if you follow the lead of Mumi Mihanovich and Agustin Caffarena.
Mihanovich and Caffarena live in a stylish, spacious 2314-square-foot apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with their children. A creative director for a high-fashion label by day, Mihanovich was up to the challenge of maxing out her ample square footage with stylish solutions for work and play. “I love fashion, spaces, and objects, and to generate creatively nice things that I like to live with,” she says. “Sometimes, things and objects just get together and integrate like in a puzzle,” and that’s certainly the case in her relatively open concept layout. Specifically, right in the middle of her library area — just off her main dining table — she created a bonus dining moment with a piece of a curved sectional, two dining chairs, and tulip-style table.
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Mihanovich’s one-story apartment is over 2000 square feet, so it’s not like she needed this extra little nook for eating. Instead of building this library space out with a couple of couches though, she choose to introduce a spot where you could curl up to read and enjoy a snack or meal among your favorite books.
If you’re working with less square footage than the Mihanovich-Caffarena family, this could still work for you! In fact, if you’re a tiny apartment or studio dweller, recreating this kind of a setup in your living room might be all the dining room you’ll be able to have right now, and that’s okay. The real beauty of this solution? All you need is a small table, a chair or two, and a love seat, tiny sofa, or a curved piece of a sectional, as shown here, to carve out your own comfy eating zone in your own home.
