Installation view of LaunchPad, the micro-unit on display at the Museum of the City of New York, designed by Pierluigi Colombo and Amie Gross Architects. Photo: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

If you’ve ever walked into a New York apartment and thought to yourself, Well, there is just TOO much space in here! get over to the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) and experience your shortest pace-through ever in the dollhouse/storage locker/”apartment” of the future. With its pert fuchsia couch and sliding TV, the 325-square-foot unit from Pierluigi Colombo and Amie Gross Architects anchors the exhibition “Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers,” which opens tomorrow and will be on view through September 15.

Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg visited the museum to announce the winner of the city’s adAPT NYC competition, which asked architects and developers to propose designs for New York’s first micro-unit apartment building. Noting the city’s changing demographics—just about half of the population is single, and one-third of households are occupied by adults living alone—Bloomberg called upon New York’s unmarrieds to put themselves in storage until they pair up. Actually, the mayor put it much more mildly: “The growth rate for one- and two-person households greatly exceeds that of households with three or more people, and addressing that housing challenge requires us to think creatively and beyond our current regulations.” If only he still permitted 32-ounce soda cups—we could just live in those! See more from the show, plus the winning adAPT NYC design, after the jump.

Photo: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

Across the country, the appetite for tiny units has been growing steadily among city officials, developers, and some urban planners. In November, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors cleared the way for 375 apartmentlets of just 220 square feet to boost the city’s limited housing stock. Not to be outdone, Oakland is scheduled to vote on a proposal to allow 175-square-foot units today. The question is, will residents fall in line—or, more thematically, into a neat, modular stack?

Photo: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

Designers and developers are betting that strong design and smart layouts will charm urban dwellers into living arrangements that, at their model-home best at least, offer a sophisticated take on a dorm room. In Colombo’s and Gross’s micro-unit, transformable furnishings by Clei and Resource Furniture make changing rooms as easy as lifting a bed. Besides, who needs a bedroom that isn’t also your living room when you can hide a hot-pink bar behind your TV?

Photo: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

Organized by MCNY architecture and design curator Donald Albrecht and curatorial fellow Andrea Renner, the show includes proposals from the adAPT NYC competition and considers tiny dwellings from cities around the world, including a Tokyo apartment building and a backyard cottage in Seattle. “Seeing what is being built in cities around the world, and understanding how our rules have held back housing change, will help educate visitors and spur an important discussion of what our future housing should look like,” said Jerilyn Perine, executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, a co-organizer of the exhibition.

My Micro NY, the winning proposal of  adAPT NYC, by nARCHITECTS, Monadnock Development, and the Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation. The building will offer 22 of its 55 units at below market rate. Photo © nycmayorsoffice/Flickr

In New York, an experiment is under way. At the end of the year, the winners of the adAPT NYC competition, nARCHITECTS, will break ground on the city’s first micro-unit apartment building. Dubbed My Micro NY, their design (submitted with Monadnock Development and the Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation) will stack prefabricated modules on a city-owned lot on the far-eastern end of 27th Street. With 55 units that go as low as 250 square feet, the most micro of My Micro NY’s offerings make Amie Gross’s LaunchPad look like Downton Abbey.

Inside nARCHITECTS’ My Micro NY. Photo © nycmayorsoffice/Flickr

To make up for their size, the nARCHITECTS apartments come packed with storage. A full-depth closet and a 16-foot-long overhead loft space can hold all the urban gardening equipment, dinner-party ware, bicycle gear, and other signs of life that may not squeeze into these modern-chic dollhouses. In nARCHITECTS’ design, living spaces are reserved for public areas, which include a residents’ lounge, a ground-floor porch with picnic tables, fitness space, and a rooftop garden.

It’s a concept that caters to a generation already accustomed to living in public, whether on Facebook or in coffeeshops with generous wi-fi policies. With the right playground at its feet—ahem, High Line!—micro-units could strike a good balance between streamlined living and easy-to-access urban activity. But starting this initiative in a remote pocket of Kips Bay, with those sweeping views of FDR Drive, may not make the most convincing argument for micro-living in New York.

The facade of My Micro NY. The building will break ground on East 27th Street at the end of 2013 and open in September 2015. Photo © nycmayorsoffice/Flickr

The kitchen and bath of the LaunchPad micro-unit installation at the Museum of the City of New York. Photos: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

LaunchPad installation view. Photo: John Halpern/courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

Backyard Box’s Backyard Cottage in Seattle, Washington, part of MCNY’s “Making Room” exhibition. Photo: John Keatley

“An Array of Bungalow Additions,” a concept by Gans Studio for expanding a single-family home in Ravenswood, Queens, with a variety of accessory dwelling units. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

by Lamar Anderson

posted in exhibitions news

tagged Amie Gross Architects, apartments, exhibtions, micro-apartments, micro-home, micro-living, micro-structures, museum of the city of new york, new york

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