Compact Living: the Small House Movement

[Jan]

Related to skyscraper living in a compact living kinda way, I just watched this documentary the other day and thought is was very interesting. Basically what these people do is finding out how little you really need by trying to live in something like a 25 m2 house or appartement. The answer is: you can do quite allright in one of these.

One of the people being interviewed is Jay Schafer, who runs a Tiny House Company. Fun stuff, would be interesting to see the same philosophy applied to skyscraper apartments, especially since that allows for sharing spaces.

[Suburbanist]

I have read some things on this small house movement, but I don't think it will catch up on a widespread scale where real estate prices are acceptable. It rings a bell for me as "posh university residence hall room with bedroom". It's like a dorm, but with fancier and more high-tech stuff.

[Ribarca]

Companies like IKEA really cater for this. I have seen set-ups in their HK store that try to solve the issues of small space living.

[Heludin]

I'm a fan of compact living in theory, in practice I can't bear the thought of having to be so precise in everything I buy, although small spaces brings out your creativity and discipline(if any), I once lived in a trailer for almost one year(due to work in the mountains), and found myself doing very creative additions and changes as well as improvements to the unit.

But...if you have a family, compact living is definitely not a choice.

[Jan]

Interestingly in Dutch the word genoeglijk (or the verb genoegen) means pleasant but it's coined on top of genoeg which means: enough. This was probably based on the kind of pleasure that one gets from having enough, which means not too little, but also not too much.

[Rebasepoiss]

I'm for compact living to a certain degree. I think space just for the sake of it is pointless but I also wouldn't like to disassemble my bed and assemble the kitchen whenever I want to make a sandwich. That's the reason I like the concept of a raised bed that frees up a lot of space on the floor but is still always there in place. One of those NY apartments in the movie had a fold-down bed which blocked the bathroom door

There's also a huge problem with those designs and the furniture that's needed to make it work - they're mostly custom made and that's costly, especially if I want my apartment to still look good. If I then want to switch places, move to a bigger apartment with a girlfriend, for example, this custom furniture wouldn't probably fit very well any more, if at all. Also, if you bring another person into the equation, organising your life to small living becomes a lot more difficult. Everybody needs at least some private space from time to time and a micro-apartment or a house doesn't provide that.

[tpe]

City Unveils Winner of Tiny-Apartment Competition
By ANDY NEWMAN


A peek at the winning design in the city’s small-apartment competition. The entry, “My Micro NY,” packs a lot of space and light into less than 370 square feet.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...on/?ref=garden

Excerpt:

With space always at a premium and the number of small households growing, New York finds itself with an increasing need for small, livable apartments. On Tuesday, the city announced the winner of a tiny-apartment design competition — a building of micro-units that, if the rendering is any indication, manage to feel roomy and inviting at less than 400 square feet.

The winning design, “My Micro NY,” to be built on a city-owned site at 335 East 27th Street in Manhattan, will consist of 55 micro-units each measuring between 250 and 370 square feet, with 40 percent of the units priced to be affordable, the mayor’s office said. My Micro NY was submitted to the city’s “adAPT NYC” competition by a team composed of Monadnock Development LLC, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation and the firm nARCHITECTS...


A rendering of the exterior of My Micro NY, which will consist of 55 units, developed using modular construction.

[tpe]

A Roomy 178 Square Feet
By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: February 10, 2010



Zach Motl’s tiny studio apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/ga...ef=garden&_r=0

Excerpt:

THE tins of seasoning on top of Zach Motl’s refrigerator — Old Bay, Hungarian paprika, Madras curry powder — are for show only, chosen for their graphic punch and nifty typefaces. Living in a room that’s only 178 square feet, you don’t want to cook much, Mr. Motl said; it’s just too odoriferous. He once made French onion soup, and the apartment smelled for four days. “It was gross,” he said.

But Mr. Motl, 25, has made the most of this studio apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, which he rents for $944 a month, and has outfitted for about $2,500 in the three years since he moved to New York City. He has hewed to the old decorating dictum that says the more stuff you put in a room (albeit artfully arranged stuff), the bigger it seems. More really is more...

[poshbakerloo]

I don't think I would do too well with compact living haha. I currently have a 4 bedroom detached house. I have lived in apartments though. The latter one did have 4 bedrooms and was made up of 3 apartments knocked together across 2 floors haha, our ground floor was the 5th and 'upstairs' was the 6th.