2014
"The Macro View on Micro Units"
The Urban Land Institute Multifamily Housing Councils were awarded a ULI
Foundation research grant in fall 2013 to evaluate from multiple perspectives
the market performance and market acceptance of micro and small units.
"Web Extra: Small Spaces"
As real estate values skyrocket, young professionals who want to live in the heart of big cities on a budget are increasingly drawn to micro apartments that provide them with a minimum of private space as an alternative to sharing. Living small is nothing new. The poor have always endured cramped quarters—from primitive huts to tenements or trailers—and the homeless are grateful for a modest room in an SRO. Le Corbusier and his wife spent many summers in their 12-foot-square cabin in Roquebrune.
...More"The Public Art To Adorn San Francisco’s First Micro-Unit Building"
With the construction of Panoramic Interest’s 11-story building rising on the southwest corner of Mission and 9th Streets nearing completion, a building which includes a total of 160 market-rate units, of which 120 are “micro-units” as small as 274 square feet in size, it’s time to unveil the public art which will adorn the south façade of the building as rendered above.
From Ken Kalman, the San Francisco-based sculptor who holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has been commissioned for the installation:
...More"Living Small"
Thirty-three architectural firms entered a competition initiated by Mayor Bloomberg for 300-square-foot apartments in New York, and it’s likely that his successor will push even harder to foster innovative housing solutions. In San Francisco, the city authorities are part of the problem. In 2012, they revised their minimum space requirements to permit apartments as small as 220 square feet, but cautiously capped their number at 375. Panoramic Interests, a Berkeley-based developer, has already demonstrated their viability.
...More"S.F.’s dilemma: boom is pushing out those who make it desirable"
Why do people pay so much to live in San Francisco?” a writer for San Francisco Magazine recently asked me. My answer: Because it’s worth it. San Francisco is one of the most innovative and creative places on the planet.
But the very forces that are making San Francisco boom are also dividing it. While techies and knowledge workers make enough extra in salary and income to afford it, the city’s working and middle classes fall further behind, accelerating a dual migration in which the affluent are pouring into the city while longtime residents and lower-paid workers are being pushed out.
...More"This Micro-Housing Developer is Smokin’"
To celebrate the topping off of its 12th floor, the gang behind the Panoramic project threw a party Friday afternoon. We zipped up to the roof with Panoramic Interests’ Patrick Kennedy, the developer behind the micro-housing project delivering at the corner of 9th and Mission next June. The project will contain 120 microstudios and 40 microsuites, or two and three-bedroom apartments.
...More"Strategies for dealing with S.F.’s housing crunch"
For those who can afford to live in San Francisco, it can be a gloriously dense network of professional opportunities, friends and artisanal edibles and goods. For those who are on the outside, it seems ridiculously unattainable – an image not helped by extreme rental listings (case in point: For the privilege of crashing in a Nob Hill living room, the renter was expected to pay a monthly rent of $900 as well as contribute hours of Web programming).
...More"Tour a Totally Livable 242-Square-Foot West Village Apartment"
Jourdan Lawlor bought her tiny apartment on West 12th Street, in a quaintformer dormitory for Hudson River dockworkers, in 2011—three weeks before she met Tobin Ludwig. The director of sales development at The Daily Meal, she was tired of renting and decided to buy, scouring the city for a downtown apartment under $300,000 before settling on this prewar option, a high-ceilinged ground-floor studio that clocks in at a diminutive 242 square feet. That includes closets, cabinets, and a 29-square-foot storage nook above the bathroom door.
...More"Vexed in the city: Silicon Valley’s invasion of San Francisco"
A major migration is under way, with technology companies large and small setting up shop in San Francisco and bypassing the historic heart of the tech industry.
SAN FRANCISCO — From the sixth-floor boardroom where Zendesk holds its most important meetings, CEO Mikkel Svane has a unique view of San Francisco. It’s not the iconic snapshot of the city — no Golden Gate Bridge or Transamerica Pyramid.
...More"What It’s Like to Live in a Micro-Apartment"
As a New Yorker, burdened as I am with our stereotypical New York-centricity, it kinda pains me to admit that Seattle is America’s micro-apartment capital. Seattle’s micro-apartment’s might lack the flash of NYC’s adAPT pilot program or the innovation behind Panoramic Interests‘ San Francisco develops.
...More
