Inter-national Small Cool Apartments 2008

Not to be outdone by the smallest coolest apartments in the U.S. brought to you by Apartment Therapy, here are the international winners:

First place (topmost image) - Nicolas’ Mini Loft, Lille, France, 630 s.f. “I keep things that are useful or important to me, and get rid of the rest : no extra room to accumulate! You feel lighter when you don’t own too much stuff!...“

Second place - Aad’s Compact Dwelling (Suitable for Laziness), Rotterdam, The

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Small Cool Apartments 2008

It’s that time of year again to check out the winners of Apartment Therapy’s Small Cool 2008 contest to discover the smallest (under 850 s.f.), coolest apartments in the U.S.

First place (topmost image) - Tony and Hilary’s 3 in 1 Studio, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY, 460 s.f. “Living here as a couple with a cat, we have enough space to store everything we need without sacrificing comfort.“

Second place - Jordan’s Ordo Ab Chao, Los Angeles, CA, 412 s.f. apartment

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The continued rise of the home office

We hear a lot of buzz about the popularity of people working at home, but how prevalent is it?  Here’s a snapshot via answering a few questions:

How many U.S. Americans are working at home? 28 million at least part time in 2006.
Is that number growing? That’s a 10% increase from the previous year and a 40% increase from 2002.
Do U.S. Americans have home offices?  7 out of 10 have offices or designated work stations, a 112% increases since 2000.
How

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‘Workforce housing’ and why local businesses want it

Imagine if half of all your employees suddenly couldn’t afford to live conveniently near your workplace? Many of them would leave rather than spend two hours of their daily lives in traffic or transit. Of course you’d replace them, but you wouldn’t be attracting the same level of talent, then naturally, your customers would gradually realize the same.

Thus local businesses today are advocating for more ‘workforce housing’ - housing that

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The ultimate small apartment design guide

If you live in an apartment and you care about good design, it’d be a shame if you’ve never been to Apartment Therapy’s 3-million-unique-visitors-a-month site, featuring great apartment design examples via several illustrated blog entries a day.

Being a regular at the site, one can fathom the criticism following the site’s founder and HGTV design expert Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan for not having pictures in his first Apartment Therapy book. He didn’t

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Micro-housing affordable to buyers, profitable to developers

There is not a desirable city that exists that doesn’t have a lack of attainably-priced housing, and it’s been covered pretty extensively. Smaller homes have been one of the most logical answers, and developers are starting to agree to the point investors have termed the smallest end of these offerings…

Microhousing is defined as very small one-two bedroom units, 300 to 500 square feet, with an emphasis on shared amenities like

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If you’re looking for color inspiration when it comes to home interior design, it’ll be tough to find a better source than the annual Apartment Therapy Fall Colors 2007 contest.  Apartment Therapy itself is one of the best daily resources for apartment design.

This year’s winner hails from a couple in Chinatown, Los Angeles. See a full range of rather stellar photos here. From the home owners, “We have never seen white as the starting point to develop a color scheme…in our apartment, which is

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Pictur- esque infill

Every once in a while it’s important to show a bit of beauty in an urban infill development, even though it might not be attainably priced. The ultimate goal of course, is to combine beauty with attainability.

One of the development partners, the I’on Group, specializes in building beautiful homes. The other development partner, Civic Square, builds beautiful public spaces into their projects, “that contribute to the ideal of a more successful public realm, whether in

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Self expression at its residential best

In the industrial age people had a choice of either a mass-produced suburban home or a mass-produced apartment. In the knowledge age where

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Magic Johnson presents ‘design-your-own’ lofts

There’s more interesting twists to this story than you may first think. The post-Lakers career Magic Johnson is known for in the business world is bringing urban retail to economically-disinvested neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, his somewhat industrial economy approach has been to do so with clusters of national chains like TGIF’s and Starbucks (see his website for immediate evidence), not the most effective means of supporting the local economy

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Attainable urban live-work flex housing

In Michigan the housing market is ‘absolutely horrendous’, according to Geoff Greeneisen, VP of local developer, the Terra Land Group. So they’ve decided to supply what has been one of the strongest, most ignored demands in the market - attainable, entry-level downtown housing for Generation X, Generation Y, and “black-collar creatives.”

“These younger buyers are just what a community with a downtown needs. When a place to live costs a great deal

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Each year the innovative folks at Apartment Therapy award the smallest, coolest apartments across the country, and now around the world. Now when they say smallest, they really do mean smallest (ie some winning pads are 300 s.f.), but they also hold true to being utterly cool as well.

First place (top image), London - This tiny 300 s.f. residence won for its adaptability to different uses, moods. The kitchen and work areas can actually be concealed! Notice how the tops of the chairs fit right

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Beatnik-inspired housing: The Jack Kerouac Lofts

What are the words often associated with Beta Generation writer Jack Kerouac? Free spirit, bohemian, unconventional, counter-culture...

It was only natural that he should provide the DNA for the 60 urban residences to rise from a one-acre lot in Denver surrounded by railyards and vacant industrial buildings dating back to the 1880s, now officially named the Jack Kerouac Lofts. Endorsed by the Kerouac family, it’s not surprising that the

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KC revitalizing its historic music district with some jazzy style

Baseball and jazz - two distinctly American traditions that have defined the history and now revitalization of Kansas City’s 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District.

The City recently invested $24 million to build new museums that preserve both the legacy of its charter member of the Negro National League in 1920, the Kansas City Monarchs (the longest running franchise in the Negro Leagues’ history) and its reputation as a

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Face-face social networking on the rise in condos

We all know emerging populations are migrating to social networking websites by the millions, so it was a matter of time before this manifested in the built environment, as hinted at in an earlier entry here.

Based on the recent NY Times article, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, new condos in the city come with bricks-and-mortar social networking amenities as standard equipment. Instead of virtual chat lounges, discussion boards and

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Young developers focus on ‘workforce’ housing

Talk to any urban real estate developer and you’ll quickly discover their goal is to sell their units at the highest price possible for whatever property or site they’re developing, which is why you often see the adjective ‘luxury’ attached. Fortunately, the urban luxury housing market is nearing saturation at the same time a young generation of developers are emerging that empathize with their peers who can’t afford what boomers can, yet still

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So you want to stay in the heart of London for $50 a night…

This is how to do it.  Think of the micro compact home (pictured), mc-h for short, as the Smart car of homes.  For more practical living, check out the MINI Cooper of homes.

As you can see by this graphic, household size is dropping dramatically, and with that comes a migration back to city centers from suburbia where people no longer need all that space (and isolation). As the hyper-popularity of places like London, Paris and

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What are the kitchen trends of the near future? Who better to ask than Susan Serra, renowned CKD (Certified Kitchen Designer) and editor of one of the best/only kitchen design blogs around… and yes, she has a Manhattan apartment, so she knows a thing or two about creative urban.

From her blog, her answer starts out with, “It used to be that a trend would be so blindly followed, really blindly. I see the internet as being responsible for this sea change.

She sees images of people’s own

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Old UPS factory turned new award-winning lofts

No, this isn’t a good example of housing that ‘normal people’ can afford, but it is a touchstone model for transforming a neglected warehouse into an inspired destination. It goes well with the stylish coffeehouse presented yesterday, and sets a good benchmark for what humanistic 21st Century design could be.

Formerly a UPS factory built in 1936 (see image to the left), the building was renovated into what is now a fresh, contemporary, new

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A little imagination goes a long way in loft housing

If there’s one thing that separates ‘cool town’ developer vs a conventional one, it’s the ability to see an exciting destination where others see an eyesore.  How does one acquire this ability?  Here are a couple of tips…

1. Look at buildings constructed before 1930, the last era of pedestrian-oriented development before the auto-oriented suburbia was invented. Anything built after that was increasingly affected by the mass

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How would you like your home to feel… right now?

Each year 100,000 people attend the annual International Builders Show to get a headstart on homebuying trends. So what did they walk away with this year?

For the first time ever, it’s quality over quantity as U.S. homes have finally hit their peak size. ‘Not so big’ is in, though that’s been already covered here.

More homes are going green as costs go down and environmental awareness goes up, but for our readers, that’s nothing new either.

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Touchstone example of what the creative class is looking for

This is a great example of what the creative class is looking for - the strange thing is that this building, the Fifth Avenue Court Apartments in Portland, OR, is hardly getting any recognition at all (until perhaps now.)  It’s not even profiled on the architects’ website!  It just goes to show the disconnect between what people really want and what gets marketed, but we all know that’s going to change soon.

Here’s what makes

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Buyers once again preferring homes, buildings with human proportions

Walk around those popular historic districts of the 1920s - notice how most of the buildings are taller than they are wide?

They proceeded to go flat in the mid-20th century that followed, bringing a fascination with all things mechanical and mass-produced… “Mass production also led to a standard for low ceilings. The architect Le Corbusier saw houses as machines for living, with all the stripped-down functionality that

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Art gallery by day, home by night

So you want to open an art gallery, but don’t have the budget?  Or how about just wanting to have your home double as an office with employees during the day?  The folks at I-Beam Design worked out quite the solution in this Manhattan loft.

The highlights:
- A revolving wall/door that separates the main gallery/workplace from the private section of the house by day, opens it up by night.
- Moving panels that hide your, ahem, flat-panel TV, in not one, but

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Does this sound familiar?  “I (or we) would love to buy a condo, but they’re too expensive where I want to live and I don’t want to go the housemate route to help pay the mortgage.“  Or how about this, “I’d really like to live in this neighborhood for at least a couple of years and would love to rent out a contemporary not-so-big efficiency to be able to afford it, but they simply don’t exist.“

Well, both those prayers are about to be answered with what is being referred to as Mortgage

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