Teeny, tiny apartments

[azmouse]

Quote:New Yorkers are famous for their teeny apartments, but a new trend in dwelling seeks to transform those tiny spaces into big assets. They're called "micro apartments," and they make a few hundred square feet feel like over a thousand.

Fold-away beds, moveable walls, and coffee tables that expand to seat 10 for dinner are just a few of the clever touches that transform these shoe boxes into veritable mini-mansions.

"The main idea is to get double, triple, quadruple use from every space," Graham Hill, founder of the sustainable living site TreeHugger.com and the design company Life Edited, told Fair Companies in a video interview.

With rising costs of living and a desire to limit one's environmental impact at top of mind, living simpler, and smaller, has taken off in cities around the world, especially ones known for their high rents. San Francisco recently passed an ordinance allowing for apartments to be built to 220 square feet. And "micro units" have also long been a Tokyo and Hong Kong mainstay.

http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/01/2...s#comments

Whatever works for folks, I guess. For all that I live a large metro area, Phoenix is nothing like New York. We aren't piled up in expensive high rise apartments. We're spread out quite a bit here.
As I read this article I looked around the 400 sqft familyroom I'm in and tried to imagine what it would be like for this to be the entirety of my living space. I couldn't do it. Not at this point in my life. I like having some room to roam.

[pappy]

I saw many of these ideas on one of the HGTV programs and some of it was amzing in the ways every possible inch of space got utilized.

But is you want small.......

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/pages/houses

Here is one sample



NEW VESICA
Studio 289 sq ft
1 Bedroom 384 sq ft

[sandnsea]

They're called studios and they're not new. Poor folks have been living in them forever. Are they going to give them a new name so they can jack up the price and even poor folks won't have a place to live? Like they did with "condos"? People are so easily duped.

[Born_A_Truman]

(01-25-2013 05:56 PM)sandnsea Wrote:  They're called studios and they're not new. Poor folks have been living in them forever. Are they going to give them a new name so they can jack up the price and even poor folks won't have a place to live? Like they did with "condos"? People are so easily duped.

I lived in a studio apartment years ago and it was bigger than 200 SF!!

[sandnsea]

(01-25-2013 06:54 PM)Born_A_Truman Wrote:  

(01-25-2013 05:56 PM)sandnsea Wrote:  They're called studios and they're not new. Poor folks have been living in them forever. Are they going to give them a new name so they can jack up the price and even poor folks won't have a place to live? Like they did with "condos"? People are so easily duped.

I lived in a studio apartment years ago and it was bigger than 200 SF!!

I was thinking more along the lines of the 400 sf. I think my living rom is 200 sf and I would hate to have it be my entire living space. I have another catch-all space that is about 400 sf and I could live in that pretty easily, it would be a nice sized studio. I just hate when they try to pretend something is trendy in order to triple the price.

[janedrake]

What am I missing. As a New Yorker, these places look pretty huge to me for the average city apartment.