Japan, with its one-room-mansions and Kyosho Jutaku homes, gets a lot of attention for small space living, but England deserves recognition as one of the small-space-living world capitals. The country is packed–the densest in Europe in fact.
According to The Guardian England has no minimum space standards! While this doesn’t create a lot room for storage, it does leave room for innovation…or, as The Guardian suggests, developers looking to pulp every dollar from every square foot.
Like the fellow London Yo Home! flat we looked at last week, we think the LuxPod falls in the innovative category. The experimental space was built in 2008. According to LuxPod’s website, it’s 11 sq m/118 sq ft, which is by no means the smallest space we’ve seen, but it’s pretty damn small. It was initially used as a vacation property. It is not clear what it’s being used for now (we’re looking into it).
It’s really an impressive little space. The finishes are top notch. There are a number of cool features like a retracting countertop that creates a dining bar. There’s a cool “wet” bathroom. All of the appliances and furniture look high end. The layout–as far as a 118 sq ft spaces go–is great.
The important thing to note about micro apartments like these is they are not intended for everyone. For example, when this author moved to New York City 11 years ago, 118 sq ft of my own would have been palatial. As there was nothing like this available, I had to share an illegally divided apartment with 4 other people. Two of the bedrooms had no windows.
There is a worldwide market for small spaces. Many people, like my younger self, want a clean space for themselves in major cities and beyond. Now it’s a matter of making them available, livable and affordable for the people who need them.
In the 70’s and 80’s, single room occupancy (SRO) housing became synonymous with drugs, crime, totalitarian architecture and poor building quality. While the circumstances that lead people to SRO’s are still less than ideal (many are for the homeless population or very low income residents), a few architects are looking at what the buildings look like and what it means to live in them, designing innovative and supportive spaces for the populations they house.
Many SRO’s like the ones featured here enjoy a pass on restrictive building codes, allowing smaller unit sizes and larger communal areas than their conventional residential counterparts. Perhaps these developments presaged the upcoming micro-unit movement we’ve been talking so much about.
Harold and Margot Schiff Residence, Chicago IL
photo by Doug Snower
This building (also known as Near North Apartments or Mercy SRO) was designed by Murphy/Jahn Architecture, famous for O’Hare’s United terminal and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport among many other large, notable projects. Charles Hoch, professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois told the NY Times that the design is a “stigma-smasher.”
The 96-unit building, built in 2007, borrows on “the cachet of Mr. Jahn to send a message to the larger society and that message is that homeless people have value, they have a role to play in society,” according to Hoch.
It is LEED silver certified, has solar panels and wind turbines that generate 15% of the buildings power and a grey-water recycling system (the first of its kind in Chicago). The ground floor features a large community space and the four top floors feature bright and airy units whose average size is 300 sq ft. Many of them feature views of downtown Chicago.
Bronx Park East, Bronx, NY
Before adAPT NYC, there was this SRO development by Jonathan Kirschenfeld, whose firm has done several similar sustainable “supportive housing” developments. The building, built in 2009, features triple-height street-side windows and 68 well-lit units with kitchenettes and private bathrooms. Units measure 285 sq ft, as supportive housing bypasses residential code that New York City spaces be 400 sq ft and up.
The development features a courtyard with a garden, a gymnasium and a double-height-windowed common room. Mr Kirschenfeld sees these kinds of spaces as integral to the intention of the space as he remarked to the NY Times: “Isn’t the idea here to improve mental health? Isn’t good architecture part of that?”
Another interesting aspect of Bronx East is its footprint, which utilizes an irregular lot.
Both of these developments show that innovation can come from unlikely sources and that good architecture and design need not be the domain of the rich.
If you know of similar innovative supportive housing, let us know.
Last week, 33 development teams submitted to adAPT NYC–the Bloomberg-administration-supported competition seeking the best 275-300 sq ft/unit apartment building proposal [full disclosure: LifeEdited was on one of the teams]. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is three times the number of entrants similar competitions draw.
“The City’s adAPT NYC competition has ignited a global interest and conversation about how high-density urban centers can right-size their housing stock to fit changing demographics,” according to Mathew Wambua, commissioner of the housing preservation department.
Good news, right?
Well, not according to everyone.
This last Tuesday, a few thousand miles away in San Francisco, the South of Market Community Action Network (Somcan) took to the steps of City Hall to protest a proposed change in housing code that would permit dwellings as small as 150 sq ft.
Perhaps because of its proximity to Japan, San Francisco has been at the vanguard of small building in the US for some time. Unlike NYC, who demands new apartments have a minimum of 400 sq ft of living space (adAPT NYC is receiving a waiver on that), San Francisco already allows new spaces to be built as small as 220 sq ft. The Cubix SF, which has units as small as 230 sq ft, has been around for several years. An upcoming project by SmartSpace at 38 Harriet St in the SoMa neighborhood will feature 4 stories of 300 sq ft units.
What Somcan is protesting is the city’s ostensible shifting focus from family-friendly affordable housing to housing for affluent, childless singles and couples. This is taken from Somcan’s Facebook page:
SF has yet to meet its SF Housing Element plan of prioritizing affordable family housing units and yet creating housing for the new techies in the neighborhood seems to be first on the agenda. With less families in San Francisco means less family-friendly city and less funds for our public schools. It will be competing with the minimal land that the City has which can be use for REAL affordable housing. This type of development could possibly be catastrophic to our neighborhood, displacing low-income families, singles and existing residents
They might have a point: mico-units are not family friendly. They are primarily for singles and couples without children. The construction of micro-units could be construed as an elevation of their needs over those of families. And while there are no protests (yet), the same could be said of adAPT NYC.
What complicates Somcan’s argument is:
Market demand. Singles and couples need affordable housing too. SF micro-units will start around $1300/month, far lower than the $2300 median price for a studio in that neighborhood.
Smart design actually makes these spaces more livable than comparable, larger spaces.
As cities grow denser, a fundamental shift in living spaces will have to be made. NYC, for example, expects nearly 1M new residents by 2030. The city says 85% of the housing stock for those people is already built, so redistribution of current spaces and new types of buildings will be essential to accommodating these people–whether they are singles, couples or families.
It’s a tough situation. Indeed, many cities like San Francisco and NYC are becoming prohibitively expensive for families. Yet singles and couples need affordable places to live.
Then again, maybe 150 sq ft is just too damn small (though the Japanese would have room to spare). Maybe really small legal micro-units would make cities the near-exclusive domain of singles, driving out all but the richest families. And maybe these dinky digs would open the gates to exploitation–already a problem in space-strapped places like Hong Kong, Singapore and London. Perhaps there is such a thing as too small.
We’re obviously more in the pro-micro-unit camp. We think they portend a fundamental, and positive, shift in the way people live in the city and even beyond. We also believe they can be scaled up for any type of household. But we’d love to hear what you think? Are micro-units providing affordable, smart and efficient housing for tomorrow’s urban dweller? Or are they displacing families and existing tenants in favor or “new techies”? Let us know your thoughts.
Clarification: San Francisco’s current code allows 220 sq living spaces, with 70 sq ft additional for kitchen and bathroom (290 sq ft total). A proposed change in code would allow for 150 sq ft living space with 70 sq ft additional for kitchen and bathroom (220 sq ft total).
The England-based Yo! Company is a branding and investment firm that brings Japanese-tinged enterprises to Western territories. Among its holdings are Yo! Sushi, a conveyor belt Kaiten sushi bar in London and Yotel, a Japanese-style hotel with compact-rooms that has locations in London, Amsterdam and New York City.
Now Yo! Co founder Simon Woodroffe is bringing his Japanglo magic to the home market with the Yo! Home. The 800 sq ft London concept home aims to take us out the “agricultural, primitive age” he believes we live in now and into the future–a time when people will ask “do you remember when they had one space and it couldn’t change around?”
The Yo! Home changes around alright. There is a bed that descends from the ceiling and covers up a huge lounge area. There is a dining area that pops up from the floor; the same floor that hides a wine wine cellar. The kitchen hides completely. The guest room has a large sliding door that opens up to increase the area of the main room.
The space relies on a fair amount of automation, some of which broke down during his tour with Channel 4 News (above). To be fair, this is a prototype and breakdowns are to be expected. We do wonder about the long-term implications of an automated home. What happens if you’re really tired and can’t get you bed down?
Woodroffe spent £200K on the Yo! Home (~$325K US), which actually doesn’t seem like a lot seeing as how elaborate the space is. He thinks it’ll initially be for moneyed clients, but believes the technology and designs will eventually trickle down to the greater public.
Our hats are off to Woodroffe and his bold enterprise. Architectural thinking often gets fossilized because structures are imbued with a sense of permanency–so architects and designers avoid risky designs like these; ones that might look weird a few years from now. Concepts like Yo! Home loosen the noose of conventional thinking. They are invaluable idea-generators even if some of its features don’t make the final draft of the home of the future.
What do you think? Is this home the future or a curiosity–something that’ll look weird and overwrought 5 years from now? Let us know what you’re thinking.
This video from Fair Companies takes an extensive tour of Richard and Rachel’s school bus home. Unlike René Agredano and Jim Nelson’s mobile living we looked at yesterday, this project is decidedly DIY; most evidenced by the decapitated VW Vanagon that makes up the top 2 stories. Just like the latter couple, Richard and Rachel tout the advantages of living mortgage-free as one of their principle motivations for living this way.
They also liken the project, which has taken them about 6 years so far, to the cardboard forts kids make. They fabricated most of their furniture and even included things like a projection “room” on the second floor. They claim there’s a level of connection and imagination that comes from a hand-built home not usually found when you buy something already built.
There seem to be some concessions to this hacker home, e.g. no plumbing; they use grey water to shower and wash their dishes every few days. They also don’t have RV status, which I suspect is why they didn’t specify their last names or location (though the bay they look upon looks suspiciously like San Francisco Bay).
The upsides they report are many. The have a minimal carbon footprint, using a composting toilet, solar power and even a solar-powered fridge. The bus only cost $12K to build, including a $1200 fridge. They live debt free with only $100/month living expenses. And they enjoy freedom that comes from not living to pay for their lifestyle. This is a common theme from yesterday’s couple and the Tiny House Family we looked at last week.
Do you think you could live on the road like either one of these couples? Have you? What was your experience? Is this something that can be done for longer than 6 years or is this more of a phase? Could a family live like this? Is a mortgage inherently a bad thing? We’d love to hear what you think in our comments section.
Last week, we showed a family living an edited rural life, showing that densely-packed, tiny-apartmented cities aren’t the only environments that support pared-down living. We ran across another version of this way of life that is neither urban, suburban, rural or any of the above: it’s mobile.
images via liveworkdream.com
In 2007, René Agredano and Jim Nelson, inspired by their dog’s diagnosis of bone cancer, quit their corporate jobs, sold their home and most of their possessions, bought a truck and an RV trailer and hit the road with Jerry, their sick doggy to evaluate their lives. After realizing they could support themselves from the road through a combination of online businesses, freelance work and some labor, the trip, meant as a sabbatical, became a lifestyle. They have been going at it for 5+ years with no plan to stop.
We shot René a few questions via email regarding their lifestyle–asking about things like the pros/cons of RV living, their carbon footprint and what landlubbers might learn from their perambulating lifestyle.
LE: What is the best part of your lifestyle?
René Agredano: We can sum up the best part of our lifestyle in one word: Freedom. We have the freedom to live as we wish, work where we want and when we want. Being location independent entrepreneurs gives us the flexibility to go where the weather’s nice and experience all that this great big world has to offer, without sacrificing our need to earn an income.
LE: What is the worst part?
RA: Dealing with the unexpected. When you’re stationery, life is broken up into a series of predictable routines that rarely vary. But when your scenery changes throughout the year, unexpected challenges are always around the corner and there’s a big learning curve in discovering how to cope with them.
Unexpected events ranging from mechanical failures with your rig, to severe weather situations you’ve never experienced before, to something as simple as navigating your way through a new grocery store layout. All of these things challenge your ability to think on your feet and be positive while encountering the unknown.
LE: Can you say something about rising gas prices?
RA: We’re glad we have a diesel pickup and a relatively small fifth wheel trailer (24′ feet), which helps to keep our fuel bill down. And as fuel prices go up, our lifestyle gives us the ability to choose how much or how little we want to drive, unlike people who are tied down by a daily commute or suburban lifestyle.
Rising prices used to scare us, and they really hurt at the pump when we have to swipe our debit card twice! But since we’ve carefully track all of our expenses over the last 5 years, we’ve discovered that on average, we spend less than $400 a month on fuel, which probably less than what the average commuter spends driving to and from work each month.
Also, while we might travel longer distances in one shot while getting from Point A to Point B, we still drive much less frequently than most people. Once we’re in one location, we do little driving other than to the grocery store or sightseeing because we work from our rig.
LE: How do you view the issue of sustainability and your lifestyle? We saw on your blog that something about using bio-diesel. Can you say more about that?
RA: We’re from Northern California, where being an environmentalist is the de facto way of life. Before we started traveling, we were avid backpackers. Whenever we saw a big RV hauling down Highway 101, we would scoff and think “gas hog!” But now that we became one of them, we’ve realized that’s not the case for fulltimers anyhow. If someone is full-timing in their RV, even the biggest 40′ rigs have a smaller carbon footprint than the traditional lifestyle of living in a house or even a small apartment.
For example, as RVers who choose to boondock (forego standard electric, water and sewer hookups) most of the time, we are living off-grid in remote areas with solar power and satellite internet service. By not staying in RV parks unless the weather is exceptionally cold or hot, we’re not consuming a whole lot of resources. Also, we don’t consume stuff on the same level as most people, because with less space we just can’t stock up or buy things on a regular basis. We live in about 100 square feet! Whenever anything new comes into the rig, something has to go to make it fit.
One of the reasons we bought our Dodge Ram diesel pickup, was so that we could make and run biodiesel in it (a mix of veggie & diesel), or eventually convert it to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO). But the practicalities of making our own fuel have eluded us, and these days, finding anyone selling biodiesel is like a needle in a haystack. The industry has just tanked because of the bad rap the palm oil industry has received (there is debate about the ethics of harvesting these trees for fuel instead of using that land for food) and it’s really sad to see. We’re still petroleum-slaves, I hate it.
LE: Do you have a storage unit or did you really get rid of everything that couldn’t fit in you trailer?
RA: When we first hit the road, the plan was to do it for one year, then settle down and get back to “the real world” again. We sold off most of what we owned but kept got a small storage unit for things we didn’t want to have to re-purchase, like basic furniture, as well as some sentimental things. Well, one year turned into two and when we finally returned to that storage unit, we saw that we didn’t get rid of as much stuff as we thought we did. It was scary to realize that our mindset about downsizing was so different when we first hit the road. After living in a tiny space for two consecutive years, now we realize how very little we need to be happy, and it comes down to less than 1/4 of what we left in that unit!
One of our lifetime goals was to own some property, so today we own a very nice paid-for RV site on 5 acres in the Colorado Rockies. It also happens to come with a guest cabin for our visiting friends! But the cabin is off-line and not using any resources for about 10 out of 12 months. We only go there occasionally, since we still love traveling too much.
LE: How long do you plan to continue?
RA: Indefinitely! We’re having too much fun to even think about hanging up our keys.
LE: Any living strategies you can lend the non-mobile?
RA: Yes! Whether you enjoy life on the road or in a stick house, the key to living simply and being happy is to remain debt free. Living unburdened by monthly payments allows you so much more freedom. You can enjoy life to the fullest, be prepared for unexpected expenses and not live in fear of losing your job because you have so many bills to pay. Ever since we became debt free, we aren’t working just to pay bills…we have more time to to pursue our hobbies and interests that may not pay a lot of money, but make us fulfilled, like the Tripawds.com community we founded for canine amputees and their humans!
But when it comes down to it, as Dave Ramsey says, debt is a symptom of insufficient income. We have learned that the best solution to staying financially solvent and able to pursue our passions is to diversify our revenue streams and focus on earning passive, ongoing income. Instead of relying one one business for all of our earnings, we have several different endeavors that each bring in revenue streams each month. Cumulatively they all add up and we’ll never go back to a traditional small business structure again. We believe this is one of the best ways to protect ourselves against economic catastrophe, so now our mission is to help others do the same, through our remote home-based business ebook (www.bit.ly/incomeanywhere) and free coaching at Agreda.com.
When the recession hit in 2008, the restaurant Hari and Karl Berzins started went under. A year later, they were forced to sell their 3 bedroom, 1500 sq ft house. They were broke, raising a couple kids and forced to take whatever jobs their then Florida home had to offer.
Thinking of ways out of their predicament, they came across the book “Mortgage Free” by Rob Roy; the book promotes the idea of–you guessed it–being mortgage free by buying the best piece of land you can find, setting up a temporary dwelling, then building the home you want on your timetable–all in cash. They found plans from the Tiny House Blog for what their temporary abode would look like.
Karl set about building their 320 sq ft home (a figure that includes a sleeping loft). Like most tiny homes, it began on a trailer bed to avoid building regulations. He started the project in Florida, then moved it to a 3 acre plot of land in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains about a year ago. The total cost of the home itself was $12K, greatly offset by scavenged materials.
image via Inhabitat
The couple has been chronicling their journey for the last year in their blog Tiny House Family. They report a higher quality of life. They are back in the black. Both Mama and Papa (their handles on the site) have taken work they love and supports their lives, versus work to pay the bills. The kids are even digging it too (according to the parents).
They have just finalized plans for their next house, a 16′ x 24′ model that will provide considerably more room and room to expand. I get the sense that the extra space is a welcome addition.
LifeEdited tends to focus on the urban side of small space living. City-dwellers usually have smaller physical footprints, use less energy, drive less, have more human interactions and so on.
But what about rural living? [We’ll leave suburbs/exurbs out of the equation for now] On the one hand, it tends to be more spread out geographically, requires more driving, more resources in general and has less unplanned social contact. On the other hand, it can be quite low impact; people like the Berzins grow much of their own produce and use very few resources we can see. Rural homes, while typically larger than a city’s, do not have to be, as evidenced by the Berzins (at least their initial home). Rural human interactions, while not as frequent as the city’s, can often be more intimate and meaningful. Perhaps most important is rural living tends to be free of frenetic urban energy, allowing its residents to lead simpler, calmer lives.
While there is not a city/country binary, it is interesting to see people trying to achieve the same ends–a calmer life, lower overhead, more quality interaction–through very different means. Leaving aside things like jobs, family ties and other considerations, does one environment support this lifestyle better than the other?
What do you think about urban versus rural edited living? Does living in remote locations oppose the less-is-more way of life? Or might the country mouse teach the city mouse a lot about living a simpler way of life? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
The Japanese are notorious for using odd-shaped land parcels to make amazing tiny homes. In fact, they have a proper name for them: Kyosho Jutaku. The “Lucky Drops” home below is a perfect example. Because of its skinny lot, the home’s frontage was kept at a mere 10′, while it has a very long 96′ depth.
But as innovative as the Kyosho Jutaku homes are, it turns out that an angry American was the forefather of this style of skinny architecture.
In 1882, Patrick McQuade wanted to build some homes at the corner of 82nd and Lexington in New York City. Trouble was, he needed an adjoining parcel owned by Joseph Richardson; that parcel was only 5′ wide, hence McQuade offered what he thought was a reasonable $1K for the land so he could complete his project.
Richardson refused the offer, asking for $5K instead. McQuade, told him to get lost and started building, thinking that the 5′ parcel would simply go unused.
He was mistaken. Richardson later built what would be known at “The Spite House.” The house at its narrowest was 3’4″ wide. Because of a zoning law that allowed bay windows to extend 2’3″ beyond the lot, he was able to eek out a maximum width of 7’3″. The building was 102′ long, 4 stories had 8 suites (2 per floor), one of which Richardson occupied, and, surely pleasing to the man, blocked most of the light to McQuade’s building.
The place wasn’t for everyone according to the indelicate Richardson: “Everybody is not fat and there will be room enough for people who are not circus or museum folk.”
A 1929 article said this of the interior and furnishings:
Only the very smallest furniture could be fitted into the rooms. The stairways were so narrow that only one person could use a stair at a time. If a tenant wished to descend or ascend, from one floor to another, he would, of necessity, have to ascertain that no one else was using the stair. The halls throughout the house were so narrow that one person could pass another only by dodging into of the rooms until the other had passed by. The largest dining table in any of the suites was 18 inches in width. The chairs were proportionately small. The kitchen stoves were the very smallest that are made.
Unfortunately, the home was demolished in 1915 by the venerable Bing and Bing company, so pics of the interiors are nonexistent. But this narrow home, conceived in venom and anger, might have presaged the next generation of smart small homes. Or not.
But as innovative as the Kyosho Jutaku homes are, it turns out that an angry American was the forefather of this style of skinny architecture.
In this short piece from CCTV, we see the interior of Genevieve Shuler’s 105 Sq Ft NYC apartment. Shuler pays $800 for the packed-to-the-gills West Village mico-unit. She has lived there for 8 years and apparently feels there’s more than enough space for her, evidenced by the fact she has a roommate: her cat Ruby.
The tour was part of CCTV’s coverage of the adAPT NYC competition. The segment included Senior Policy Analyst of the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Council (CHPCNY) Sarah Watson. Spearheaded by executive director Jerilyn Perine, CHPCNY was one of the main initiators of the adAPT NYC competition and is the city’s biggest advocate for small-space policy reform.
One of the biggest hurdles facing building small is policy reform. As the segment indicated, the smallest you can build in NYC is currently 400 sq ft. As we see with Shuler and many others, a person can live quite comfortably in far less space. Similarly, no more than 3 unrelated persons can occupy the same space legally (though this author can attest that that policy is seldom enforced). Tenant advocacy is very important but, as is the case in New York, policy is often out of step with tenant needs and advancements in building design.
While Shuler shows that people can–if necessary–live happily in super tiny apartments, we think the best is yet to come in small living; where micro units will be designed from the ground floor to optimize the living experience. San Francisco’s SmartSpace is a great example of that. Before that happens, policy reform will have to take place in many regions. The adAPt NYC competition and CHPCNY are making that look like a likely reality.
Do you lust after compact homes? Do you fantasize about retreating into nature? Do you love moss and wood beams? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the website Cabin Porn is for you.
image credit: Vegar Moen
The site is little more than an image bank of gorgeous cabins from around the world. Some are big, but the majority are quite modest in size. There’s little in the way of commentary, design motivation, etc.–simply images with which one constructs daydreams.
image credit: Tom FowlksPhotograph by John Pedenimage credit: Jason Warner
