I’m on my way to Upper East Manhattan to the home of Franklin and Johnny but first I’m meeting Johnny. He is something of a polyglot and speaks French, Spanish and Russian fluently, with a little Dutch and Turkish thrown in, and is currently studying Arabic. I discover he even has a little Swedish up his sleeve, as he texts me ’Jag är nästan där’, I’m almost there, just before we meet up at a cafe around the corner from their apartment. A cafe with the appropriate name of Fika, a Swedish word and phenomenon, meaning coffee break, preferably accompanied by buns or cakes. He is going to guide me to their apartment, snugly tucked away beside a church and quite hard to find. Franklin is at home and as soon as I get through the door they show me around. For an apartment in New York it’s pretty spacious, around 1000 square feet, and consists of three rooms and a kitchen. But it has only one narrow window at the far end of the …

Emily Johnston, an artist and photographer has her home in East Village, Manhattan. Her apartment is stylishly furnished throughout in muted shades and has a calm and harmonious ambience. “What I really liked about this apartment when I saw it for the first time, was that it had a space I could use as an office, and that the living room had doors and is separate. As I work from home it’s really important to find ways to make a separation between work and relaxation. I determined that the living room was a place I wouldn’t work in, but would be where I could relax, read and think. I like the layout of this place too. You can be in the kitchen and another person can be in the living room and you feel like you are in a completely different space, which is a nice feature for such a small apartment.” She has been living in her 450 square feet* apartment for about four years. Before discovering this apartment she visited nearly a hundred other …