Gary Chang's 24-room suite in Hong Kong

Architect Gary Chang calls his Hong Kong home the "Domestic Transformer." In order to make the most of his small living space in crowded Hong Kong, Chang has utilized sliding walls and pullout shelves to transform his tiny apartment (32 m2) into an eco-friendly, 24-room suite. His latest effort took a year and cost just over $218,000. Mr. Chang, 46, has lived in this seventh-floor apartment since he was 14, when he moved in with his parents and three younger sisters; they rented it from a woman who owned so much property that she often forgot to collect payment. Like most of the 370 units in the 17-story building, which dates to the 1960s, the small space was partitioned into several tiny rooms - in this case, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a hallway. 

Behind one movable wall of shelving is an extra-large Duravit bathtub. A glass shower stall doubles as a steam room with color therapy and massage. The Toto toilet has a heated seat and remote control bidet, and sound emanates from a six-speaker home entertainment system. Moving partitions and opening cabinet doors reveals stacks of carefully chosen objects: Alessi dishes and Arne Jacobsen cutlery; including travel bottles and neatly packaged tissues; and several thousand CDs filling an entire wall. The wall units, which are suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling, seem to float an inch above the reflective black granite floor. As they are shifted around, the apartment becomes all manner of spaces - kitchen, library, laundry room, dressing room, a lounge with a hammock, an enclosed dining area and a wet bar. Acoustic privacy is limited. When Mr. Chang is entertaining, anyone who wants to use the phone must do so in the shower (also known as "the phone booth").

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