PressApril
"Don’t like Market Street? Wait a few minutes"
Central Market Street is not changing by the day, it’s changing by the hour.
After a week out of town traveling with my family, I cycled down Market Street Monday morning. Of course I expected some of the progress I saw: AvalonBay had added a couple of floors at 55 Ninth St., Crescent Heights had snapped on more of the glass skin at 1401 Market and poured a few more floors on the tower as well. But other developments were more startling.
...More"KCBS Cover Story: A Look Inside San Francisco’s Micro-Apartments"
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Crews are putting the finishing touches on some San Francisco micro-apartments, spaces under 300 square feet, meant to be a more affordable option for those looking to live in the city.
Just off Mission Street at 38 Harriet sits a sleek new building with 23 units, “smart spaces” that are small, but comfortable
...More"It’s a Small World"
In Seattle, they call them “apodments,” a neologism that could have come straight from Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel, Microserfs. Certainly that’s the target market. Some of these apodment buildings are even in suburban Redmond, convenient to Microsoft headquarters, with units that measure a mere 140 square feet. Kitchens are communal, like laundry rooms. The rent is about $800 a month, including Wi-Fi. Similarly, in some of Seattle’s most desirable residential neighborhoods, such as Capitol Hill, skinny towers full of tiny dwellings have popped up in recent years, encouraged by a loophole in the zoning law that allows as many as eight unrelated people to share a kitchen. Eight living spaces with one kitchen count as a single unit, allowing developers to add density without applying for a variance.
...More"Nine Berkeley buildings win ‘design excellence’ awards"
Nine buildings have been singled out as representing the best new design work in Berkeley for 2010-2012. Berkeley Design Advocates, a volunteer group of architects and urban planners, selected three UC Berkeley buildings, a restaurant, a senior home, two retail spaces — one newly built, one restored — a wine store, and the renovation of a branch library from a list of 15 submissions, and handed out the award certificates at a ceremony on Thursday, March 28. (See the 2013 Awards Brochure for full details.)
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