Tag: Micro Apartments

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adAPT NYC Winner Coming to Manhattan Soon

It’s been nearly two years since the winner of the adAPT NYC competition–the city’s pilot program for micro-housing–was announced. The winner, dubbed ‘My Micro NY’ and helmed by nArchitects and Monadnock Development, is to be a 9 story, 54 unit building in the Kips Bay Neighborhood of Manhattan. Beside the small size of its units (250 to 370 sq ft), the building is innovative in its use of prefabricated construction.

Theoretically, prefab construction boasts a number of advantages over conventional building. Systematizing construction allows for perfecting processes and avoiding snags that often beset one-off construction. Perhaps more importantly, building in an indoor, controlled space helps mitigate many site and climate unknowns that can delay construction.

This theory didn’t pan out across the East River at B2 in Brooklyn, which, at 32 stories, will be the tallest prefab building in the world. The project has been beset by construction, engineering and budgetary problems, extending the initial 18 month projected turnaround to four years.

But nine stories is a lot different than 32 and a recent article in The Atlantic gives no indication of problems with My Micro and says the units will be put in place later this winter. They will come virtually move-in ready from their manufacturing facilities in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, trucked into Manhattan and stacked on top of one another with a crane. Transforming furniture will be sold separately.

My Micro is a great symbol of the city’s willingness to seek out solutions for its housing shortage. Unfortunately, a 54 unit symbol will not make much of an impact in the big scheme of things. The city still has the same minimum size requirements it did two years ago (400 sq ft in most places) and still has laws that stymy adding density and providing affordable housing options–e.g. it’s illegal for more than three non-related individuals to share a house. We hope the De Blasio administration will pick up Bloomberg’s small-space-housing-advocacy baton, leading to more smart, affordable housing and fewer symbols.

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What It’s Like to Live Near a Micro-Apartment Building

Much of the controversy surrounding the addition of micro-apartments in Seattle involved what might happen should the micro-apartment dwellers move into neighborhoods that had theretofore been the habitat of dwellers of single-family and other more conventional housing types. While we’ve heard one account of what it’s like to live in a micro-apartment, we have not heard as much about what it’s like to live near one of the buildings. Were the protesters right?

After a couple years of living next to a micro-apartment building in Seattle’s popular Capitol Hill area, one of those more conventional house-dwellers, Jason Weill, decided to report whether the fears had any basis in truth. His account is something of a mixed bag. In many ways, he confirmed many of the concerns, but in other ways, he seemed untroubled about their impact–at least weighed against the benefits the building brings.

Fittingly, the first point he brings up is parking. He writes, “A corner of my building’s parking lot has been turned into an impromptu aPodment [micro-apartment] loading zone, annoying some of my neighbors.” That said, he writes that parking was a problem before the building moved in and it’s unclear whether the situation got any worse. It should be noted that he is: 1. a single male from all we can gather, and 2. a non-car owner. If he had a family or a car, his perspective might be different.

Since Seattleites don’t typically have air conditioning, he reports that there’s been an uptick in noise from the building’s roof deck and balconies in the summer months. Though again, he doesn’t sound especially troubled by it.

His last point–and perhaps most important one–is that the building has maintained the neighborhoods “class diversity.” Beyond the fear of diminished parking, many of the micro-apartment protests seemed tinged with a “I don’t want those type of people affecting my property values.” The stereotypical micro-apartment dweller is younger and less settled than the typical single family or condo dweller. In fact, Weill thinks this stereotype worked in his favor. He was able to purchase his place easier because of fears about what type of people the building–which was going up when he bought–would bring to the neighborhood. And Weill confirms that the building, whose rents range from $600-1200 and have three month leases available, has “attracted a surprisingly broad mix of students, full-time workers, and recent college grads saving up for their first real apartment.” Rather than seeing these different types of folks as a blight, he seems encouraged that there is an opportunity for the non-well-heeled to get into a nice neighborhood.

What Weill gets that many don’t is that having a diversity of housing types–and resident types–is something to embrace, not fear. He also grasps the greater context of Seattle’s housing market. He writes, “As of 2013 the city had added 15,000 jobs year-over-year while only 9,000 housing units were expected to become available for each of the next five years.” These people–many of whom don’t have the resources for conventional housing–have to live somewhere they can afford. The micro-apartments provide that somewhere. Weill asks, why shouldn’t they be in my backyard?

Read Weill’s full post on his website.

Via Capitol Hill Seattle Blog

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Micro-Rentals in Madrid Illustrate the Power of Great Design

After the Spanish economy tanked several years ago, many Madrileños were forced to move out of fancy neighborhoods into the dustier parts of town. One of those neighborhoods was Lavapiés. Despite its central location, Lavapiés was–and is to a large extent–underdeveloped. But over the last several years it has become a hipster haven, with many galleries, cafes and restaurants cropping up. Sensing a dearth of housing options in the area, real estate developer EnfoKa set out to build attractive, affordable housing to cater to the neighborhood’s artsy/left-of-center residents.

So far EnfoKa has done more than 50 renovations with their signature look. The apartments are almost universally small–sub 400 sq ft, with many under 200 sq ft. Their size is not necessarily by design. The two main guys behind EnfoKa, Alejandro Fernández de Oliveira and Wynn Williamson, explained that their size is “merely the result of the fact that many old apartments in the Madrid City Centre are this size.”

While EnfoKa has been experimenting with “flexible spaces” using modular furniture, murphy beds and built-in storage, he majority have more conventional layouts, albeit with tiny footprints. Their aesthetic is a mixture of modern and rustic elements. Elegant steel staircases mix easily 300 year old timber beams. One of the intents was to make the spaces appear and function like larger spaces. De Oliveira and Williamson wrote, “We are very focused on making these small spaces attractive and comfortable. Our architects and interior designers try to include visible/hidden spaces, heights, textures, etc. to give the impression of greater dimensions.”

EnfoKa’s attention to design seems to be resonating with renters. Williamson said the apartments are 100% rented, despite a 30-40% premium paid on top of comparable properties. The total costs are still fairly earthbound, with average rents running about €600-800 per month.

EnfoKa is working on expanding the concept to larger projects. De Oliveira and Williamson wrote, “We recently purchased our first small building and we are going to run them as short term ‘tourist apartment’ rentals. We are also collaborating in the acquisition of a larger building which is going to be run as student housing. This building has many 100-150 sq ft dorm rooms which will have our aesthetic as well as large common areas.”

One of the biggest problems with small spaces is that they are treated as third class housing. Making them beautiful and functional often takes a backseat to making them cheap. The EnfoKa flats illustrate that a little attention to design and detail goes a long way toward making tiny spaces livable, functional and even attractive.

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Tapioca-Inspired Micro-Housing

The micro-housing conversation tends to have an either/or note about it. Either we build basic housing that suits the peripatetic single or we build housing that’s suitable for larger households who want to lay roots and build community. Rarely is there talk about making housing that’s adaptable to multiple use-case scenarios, which is something the Songpa Micro House by SsD Architects in Seoul attempts to do.

According to the architects, the “fourteen ‘unit blocks’ allow residents to either claim a single unit, or in the case where a couple or friends require more space, recombine the blocks for larger configurations.” The architects liken the unit configuration to tapioca, saying the various gangplanks and courtyards act like “the ambiguous gel around a tapioca pearl” and create “a soft intersection between public/private and interior/exterior, creating social fabrics between neighbors.”

Whereas the permeable dwelling unit configuration creates a hazy intra-building division of private and shared spaces, the base of the building, which contains a “micro‐auditorium/cafe” accessed by a public stairway, creates a hazy division of public and private property.

The whole idea is to create a high-density living situation that is more than a flop-house to live in before people move onto bigger and better things. The architects warn that “micro-housing has the danger of becoming a provisional housing type with little social value.” By making social spaces part of its DNA, the Songpa Micro House is someplace that looks pretty fun to live in, and one you might want to live in for a while.

Via ArchDaily

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Oh What A Feeling, When You’re Sleeping on the Ceiling

We feature wall beds galore on this site and every now and again we see a trundle bed, but It’s not often that we see beds suspended from the ceiling. Generally speaking, ceiling mounting a bed requires a bit more engineering than other types of hiding beds. The upside (no pun intended) is that the bed doesn’t take up any wall or floor volume–useful in a skinny space with high ceilings. Such is the situation in this 355 sq ft Milanese apartment by architect Tommaso Giunchi.

The custom made bed is manually operated and pulled down standing on a hidden stool. Hiding the bed allows for the bedroom to double as living room during the day.

The bed is far from the only feature of the apartment: there is floor-to-ceiling MDF storage through the space, a kitchen featuring a small, fold-out bench and a bathroom that manages to fit a washer dryer in between the shower stall and sink.

Long and narrow apartments like this one are common throughout the world’s cities (called railroad apartments in the US). We appreciate Giunchi’s innovative approach to furniture design and space layout.

via Cose di Casa

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Two Hilarious Takes on Tiny Living

We at LifeEdited are official members of the Tiny Living Booster Society (TLBS) and can, at times, be pretty biased toward all things small. But we’re also humans–ones who appreciate breathing room and a little space on occasion. We know tiny has its limits.

We love these two short videos, which show tiny living taken to its most absurd extremes. The first is King’s Cube, a hilarious parody on Hong Kong’s often-microscopic apartments. And the other is from Dawn Jones-Redstone who spoofs the tiny house movement. Enjoy!

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The Smarter Bunker

Transforming interiors are cool and all to look at, but it takes a lot more to make a great building, one whose interior, common spaces and exterior serve individual, community and neighborhood alike. This building by Argentina’s intile&rogers arquitectura is a fine example of such a building.

Each of the three residential floors are composed of four small modular units, three of which have identical layouts and interiors with large floor-to-ceiling “furniture” volumes that contain bathroom, kitchen, tons of storage and a lofted bed. At the end of each floor is one larger unit with a closed bedroom and its own furniture volume. Every unit has its own covered balcony.

The architects say that, “The common areas in the building complement the minimum dwellings in social terms, besides encouraging interaction between users.” Accordingly, there are large hallways, as well as a roof that features a covered common area, green roof and lap pool.

The concrete interior might not be for everyone (most likely done for its cooling properties) and the units seem suited for singles or couples. But we like the overall efficiency of the building’s layout, the simplicity and functionality of its interiors and the usable common spaces.

via Dezeen

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An Attic You Wouldn’t Mind Being Trapped In

With their sloping roofs and associations with housing unwanted family members, the poor attic has a hard time being recognized as a legitimate place to live. This situation makes Italian architect Michele Gambato’s attic conversion in Padua all the more impressive (full disclosure: it’s a top-floor apartment). Gambato actually made the 258 sq ft space seem pretty livable.

Gambato wanted to divide the tiny space into discreet kitchen, dining, living and sleeping zones. He blocked out the open space using cabintry along the perimeter as well as interior of the space.

michele-gambato-floorplan

The center storage volume houses a trundle bed which can be used as a sofa or bed depending on how far it is extended. Like Anthony Gill’s family apartment, Gambato takes advantage of the volume where the bed is stored, using it as a dining platform, whose height makes it easier to look out the flat’s lone window. All the cabinets are white-washed plywood and the floor is concrete, giving the space a light and open feel. Perhaps if this Gambato had visited the Bates’ household back in the day, things wouldn’t have ended up so poorly.

Thanks for the tip Andrei

Images courtesy of Michele Gambato

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Big Personality, Small Apartment

We have a tendency of showcasing sleek, somewhat futuristic small apartments on this site, and while we are quite unapologetic about this, it is by no means the only aesthetic available to small space dwellers. In fact, many of our readers appreciate a more lived-in vibe to their small interiors, and we thought this 242 sq ft apartment in Manhattan’s West Village a nice example of what that can look like.

The apartment is shared by couple Jourdan Lawlor and Tobin Ludwig. The former bought the tiny place a few weeks before meeting the latter, and when things got serious, they decided to throw money into the apartment rather than moving to a larger space. They replaced the kitchen, added cabinetry and bought the Nuovoliola wall bed/sofa from Resource Furniture, which turns the main room–i.e. the only room–into the bedroom. There is also a pocket dining table and bench that pull out of a cabinet.

jourdan-lawlor-garden

The apartment benefits greatly by its access to a communal garden, which the apartment faces out into. Another perk is its location in the heart of the West Village, a neighborhood that enjoys the split personality of being lively and tranquil (with some block-by-block variation).

Unlike many apartments we feature here, the little space is brimming with art, books, rugs and other stuff people collect over the years. That said, the couple did have to get rid of a lot of stuff to fit into the space together. Ludwig spoke positively of the experience, telling Curbed, “We both culled things we accumulated that we had been hauling from place to place because we could. I don’t feel like I lost anything, but I gained a lot.”

Via Curbed

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A Case for Bringing Back the Residential Hotel

Up until its condominium conversion in 2005, Barbizon 63 was a paragon of compact, efficient living in New York City. For most of its life, the building was used as a women’s “residential hotel.” Located on Manhattan’s upper east side, the 23 story building contained 700 tiny units. In the 70s, you could rent a room at the Barbizon 63 for around $160/week (in 2014 dollars). That rent included a furnished single room, bathroom down the hall along with in-house lounges, a gym with swimming pool and a communal dining hall. It provided cheap, safe and clean lodging for women starting out in the city. The names of past residents is a who’s who list of 20th century artistic icons: Grace Kelly, Lauren Bacall, Joan(s) Crawford and Didion, Liza Minnelli and even Ricky Gervais after they opened their doors to men in 1981.

The Barbizon Hotel New York

For all intents and purposes, Barbizon 63 was an SRO–a housing type that fell out of favor in the late 70s and 80s. Following a sustained economic downturn in NYC, SROs often become ersatz homeless shelters. Most of the buildings were  eventually converted to standard hotels and later condominiums. As for Barbizon 63, after undergoing a few iterations of hotels, it eventually went condo in 2002. Today, there are 70 units in the building (along with 16 rent-controlled holdovers). The average per sq ft listing price of a condo is about $2600. One three bedroom unit for sale has combined monthly charges of $6200.

Barbizon 63 is far from alone. Across the city, most residential hotels and SROs were converted to luxury hotels or condos. The Salvation Army on Gramercy Park shared a similar fate to Barbizon 63. It once contained 300 units that rented for about $112/week. A condo conversion a few years ago brought the building unit number down to 17. The average per sq ft listing price is a little more than $4K. The building’s smallest unit–a two-bedroom–was listed for $9.8M (in contract) and has about $10K/month of monthly charges.

The above video is by architect Jonathan Kirschenfeld from the 2011 Making Room Conference. He points to these two buildings, among others, and how the demise of the SRO led to the advent of supportive housing–a designation only available to people with special needs.

The fate of these buildings is the fate of New York and many other cities: new wealth creates a high demand for housing, which in turn eliminates affordable housing options and pushes the lower-income folks further and further from the centers of cities.

It’s hard to begrudge developers for capitalizing on market conditions. If a small population is willing to pay a premium for large homes in prestigious locations–often in buildings that had once stood derelict or underused–it’s their job to be accommodating. But these economic realities often yield unfortunate cultural consequences. Many creative folks whose talents might not have the market value of an investment banker are forced to migrate. Alternately, these same people are railroaded into work that pays the bills rather than nourishing the soul. Slowly but surely, a city’s cultural vibrancy is lost.

While we won’t suggest we know the answer to this vexing situation, we will say there’s a real need for housing like SROs, efficiencies, residential hotels, or their modern equivalent, the micro-apartments. Cheap, safe, temporary, often small, housing is a vital component to giving people–young and old–access to cities that are normally economically out of reach.

It’s a bummer what’s going on in Seattle and other places that are opposing micro-housing. Many people–especially young people at the beginning of their careers–just want a place to cheap, clean place to sleep in a decent location. They don’t need fiver burner stoves, walk in closets or in many cases, their own bathrooms. Granted, Seattle’s micro-housing isn’t usually as comely as the stately Barbizon 63 or Salvation Army buildings. But perhaps if micro-housing were to enter the canon of necessary urban housing typology, its architecture might start improving in turn.

But the revolt against micro-housing is often as much cultural as architectural. People are often afraid of the itinerant character of the micro-housing dweller. It’d be great if people started recognizing that that character, is not a threat to property values, but an invaluable component to a city’s cultural diversity.