2012
"Berkeley Developer Sees Future in Small, Smart Homes"
In a top-secret location in Berkeley, Patrick Kennedy is showing a reporter around a tiny living space — so compact in fact that, at 160 sq ft, it is the smallest apartment one is legally allowed to build.
“It is how small you can go without causing psychological problems,” jokes Kennedy, who, through his company, Panoramic Interests, is responsible for developing swathes of Berkeley. His projects include the Gaia Building on Allston Way, the Berkeleyan Apartments on Oxford Street, and the Touriel Building on University.
...More"California’s Smallest Legal Apartment: SMARTSPACE"
Housing developer, Patrick Kennedy, is a small space lover and is aiming to develop the smallest apartment allowed by California code. At around 160-square-feet not a single inch goes unused and everything is multi-purpose. He’s given his residential response to the Smart Car a spin — watch the video below to find out what works great, and what just cramps his style.
Kennedy lived in a 78-square-foot Airstream for a period of time, and was inspired to build small homes. He built the tiny apartment prototype, SMARTSPACE 1.0, in a Berkeley warehouse and had an MIT student live in, and test the home. It’s actually very impressive the amount of research that went into the design, and how efficient they’ve been with the space. After the trial period they’ve honed in on the sucesSFul details, as well as tweaks that they plan to make for the next version.
...More"Twitter a Reason 10th and Market Will Be Hot Spot"
The intersection of 10th and Market streets isn’t much to look at now: an abundance of asphalt, construction workers in a hole and on a roof, a sandwich board touting the virtues of bacon.
Stop by in a few years. I’ll wager that what you see is San Francisco’s newest hot spot.
Some clues are obvious on the landscape. Others aren’t yet apparent. And if the details are site-specific, the alchemy at work shows what cities everywhere need to thrive – a diversity of economies and scales that are flexible enough to allow for tranSFormations large and small.
...More"Airstream-Inspired Apartments Offer Tiny Luxury Homes on a Budget"
From Graham Hill’s LifeEdited project to tranSFormer apartments with moving walls, TreeHugger has featured many a dwelling from the less-is-more school of design. What stands out in these examples is the use of smart design, creativity and order to deliver the same function and even atmosphere that would previously have been delivered by simply throwing more square footage into a home. Just as fossil fuels are the enemy of creativity, it seems that over-sized homes are the enemy of smart design.
...More"Airstream-Inspired Apartments as Affordable Tiny Homes"
Patrick Kennedy is a housing developer who likes to build small. His vision is to build the housing equivalent of the Smart Car. His SMARTSPACEs will be small- just a couple hundred square feet- and prefabricated. Kennedy envisions this type of development as “a larger and hipper version of LEGO blocks”.
Building prefab allows him to construct faster and more efficiently (avoiding a lot of construction waste) and everything down to the lighting and type of furniture has been studied carefully so that space is maximized in the tiny units.
...More"The Urban Future of Work"
How denser, more urban workplaces will strengthen the Bay Area’s economic competitiveness.
High unemployment rates and slow employment growth continue to threaten our economy. Once-succesSFul sectors are in decline. Even the workplace is in transition. New technologies and ways of working have disrupted everything from the speed of a typical product cycle to the amount of real estate a company needs.
But as our economy changes, the emerging story is also a positive one.
...More"S.F. considers how to boost Muni ridership"
Despite San Francisco’s long-entrenched Transit First policy, nearly 2 in 3 trips in the city are made by car. Transportation officials want to get the number to 1 in 2 trips before the decade is over.
That would mean more people would need to get around by riding Muni, biking and walking – options that produce less congestion and air pollution.
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