And when he retired, I got the opportunity to buy the workshop.

What we did was design a space to have friends and family when they visited London.

The townhouse here is 40 square metres.

It has a footprint of 20 square metres.

It was always two floors, but we lifted the roof half a metre so we could get a mezzanine in.

Instead of making a bedroom with walls and doors, I made these built-in bed parts.

When you go to bed, you are kind of enclosed, so it feels like a treehouse or another little house inside the house.

I like to use colours, but in kind of more interventions, like colourful chairs.

We have Joe Niemeyer's pictures on the wall here and downstairs, very graphical, but also quite primary colours.

The bathroom is bright yellow.

Yellow is kind of, I find, a very happy colour, like the sunflower and the sunshine.

At the same time, the house is quite calm with its white walls and wood, but still some playfulness with some different accents of colours.

I furnished the house with chairs and also tables that are upcycled from old chairs and tables that I picked up in the street or in junk shops.

These are frames that I have stripped.

I made up the seats and the backs and do the upholsteries.

They're quite cartoonish and fun, you know, in their shapes and a bit exaggerated shapes.

It gives the space more personality.

The lamps I designed for this house here are designed in a square wooden section in oak.

To maximise the light in the space, we have put in a big skylight, which is south-facing.

We then also transfer it down to the lower ground floor with a big glass panel in the floor.

Like in any small spaces, you have to find places where you can put your storage, kind of hide it away.

So here we have storage under the bed.

We've got storage under the stairs.

In the kitchen, we have obviously a dishwasher and a washing machine and appliances that are needed.

We've got a hot boiling tap, so we don't need to have a kettle there.

In small spaces, every little square inch matters.

This is more like designing a boat or a caravan.

How do you create comfortable bedding?

How do you create enough storage and comfortable seating that doesn't take up space you haven't got?

I think the compromise is that if it's well designed, it doesn't feel smaller. www.microsoft.com