

Micro-Apartments, Tiny Homes Prefabricated in Brooklyn - vellum
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/realestate/micro-apartments-tiny-homes-prefabricated-in-brooklyn.html

======
eastbayjake
There was another Hacker News thread last month about a 32-floor prefab
apartment skyscraper in Brooklyn[1]. Many commenters said the promise was
hyped and that construction was slow. It was disappointing because this seems
like a good solution for places like the Bay Area where armies of single
professionals would happily live in small, private units with common space
amenities instead of sharing a $4-5k/mo two-bedroom with a roommate.

Does anyone know whether these apartments would be legal in California? I did
a cursory search and it looks like all apartments need one 120sqft room and at
least 70sqft for any other living rooms (not storage?). Oakland has some
additional requirements about partitions separating kitchens, but it's
unspecific about how an "efficiency apartment" designation modifies that. Not
sure about SF regulations, assuming they're even more onerous.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873906)

~~~
chvid
I don't know the regulations of California but where I live the city has
prohibited the construction of smaller units (1 bedroom, less than 700 square
feet) thru zoning regulation and the existing stock of smaller units has been
converted to bigger units.

I think if you look for a general reason why we don't have cheaper housing
thru smaller units more suitable for people living alone, you will find that
it is the explicit policy of the bigger cities.

~~~
selectodude
The amount of idiocy surrounding _one_ project to build new studios and one
bedrooms with very little parking one block away from a train stop in Chicago
was maddening. The market wants these units but developers literally cannot
build them.

[http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20141031/CRED03/14...](http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20141031/CRED03/141039958/logan-
square-residents-no-to-big-apartment-plan)

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dperny
$2000 to $3000 a month is supposed to be... affordable? Jesus, New York is
even more expensive than I thought.

~~~
spiritplumber
Or I could live 20 minutes away from SF and pay $700 a month for a small
townhome with workshop space. Pass.

~~~
wbsun
That is an awesome deal!! $700 for the entire townhouse or just a single room?

~~~
spiritplumber
The whole place. It works out. It's an exception to an assisted living
community, so it means I have to stick to 3d printing and laser cutting if I
use the shop tools after 6PM or so, and occasionally I have to help an old
person carry stuff, but it's nice. I don't even lock my front door.

~~~
runamok
I'd have to say you lucked into a pretty special deal and not representative
of much within 20 minutes of SF (and is that 20 minutes at midnight or during
rush hour?). :-)

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brenschluss
This is really fantastic! It's doing something really amazing and important in
the realm of architecture and construction that's much needed.

It's weather-agnostic - (certain construction work you just can't do in
winter). Bottlenecks are easily controlled: No questions about worrying about
different trades (say, the structural steel work, etc) being slow and pushing
all other aspects of the entire project behind. It's more predictable, since
you have very clear quantifiable markers of progress (what % of units are
completely finished?) It cuts down on the costly / cumbersome process of using
a hoist during construction, which is expensive and timely since you have to
hire specialized labor and get a permit to close off the street.

To use a programming analogy, it's effectively a kind of __parallelization or
non-blocking i /o __, since you can track progress in a reliable, controlled
setting, stagger your work, and have many different trades working at once, on
different aspects. (Electrician behind schedule on half of the units? You can
still have the plumbing crew work on the finished half while bringing more
electricians on board.)

Present-day construction is highly linear, mostly single-threaded and filled
with bottlenecks everywhere, since it's both a logistical and financial
disincentive to hire a trade to come in to do work if there's not enough work
for them to do. The contractor pads the schedule to make sure that previous
work will be ready for future work. As a result, construction times are
longer, less predictable, etc.

Granted, this isn't totally new, but it's really important that prefabrication
is getting more visibility and is understood to be the architectural game-
changer that it will be in the future.

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alricb
If the details shown on this page [1] are right, these things are built in a
silly way: the batt insulation between the steel studs is almost useless, and
could even lead to condensation problems [2].

[1]
[http://cargocollective.com/pickupsticks/filter/Prefab/Modula...](http://cargocollective.com/pickupsticks/filter/Prefab/Modular-
Prefabrication-Part-I-Fundamentals) [2]
[http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-005-a-...](http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-005-a-bridge-
too-far?topic=doctypes/insights)

~~~
brenschluss
Are you talking about the section detail in which the perimeter beam creates a
thermal break? I suppose that the modules are insulated on 5 sides (minus the
floor) - if the floor had rigid insulation, then you'd effectively have each
unit be an enclosed box.

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kapkapkap
"There are some 3,000 apartments under 400 square feet in Manhattan alone."

There's absolutely no way that is correct, it has to be off by at least 10x.

~~~
hueving
40 square foot apartments!? Surely you jest.

~~~
nols
He meant number of apartments

~~~
senorprogrammer
Surely you jest.

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ChuckMcM
I would be interested in hearing comments by anyone who lives in such a space.
There was a discussion about doing something similar in Sunnyvale and the lack
of actual experience really made it hard to debate.

~~~
daeken
I lived in an apartment in Manhattan that was somewhere around 180-200sqft (it
was originally larger, but the owner of the apartment decided to make a very
large closet between the kitchen and 'living room', for whatever reason). It
was surprisingly pleasant, when I was single. I had a queen-sized bed, a desk,
and lots of shelves.

Once my then-girlfriend moved in with me, things got a bit more stressful. Not
because we needed more space to live in -- we were surprisingly comfortable --
but because we weren't using the city as our living room anymore. When you're
going out nearly every night, you don't tend to care about the size of your
living quarters, but when you're spending your whole day there, it gets a bit
tight.

I can't imagine going back to that now, but it was the perfect place from
which to experience New York.

~~~
jseliger
_I had a queen-sized bed, a desk, and lots of shelves._

I live in NYC with my fiancée, and I've seen friends' apartments in the size
range you describe. Most of them now have Murphy Beds, which have gotten
surprisingly good
([http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/01/13/small_space_de...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/01/13/small_space_design_transformable_space_saving_furniture_from_clei.html)).
Most of them seem happy in those spaces, as long as they're not trying to
cohabitate.

I'll note too that I'm a bit skeptical of the $3000 / month charge for micro
apartments; even in Williamsburg, new, conventional one-bedroom apartments
were $3200 – $3,500 / month last summer. I can imagine people paying $2000 for
micro apartments in desirable, commutable neighborhoods, but $3000 seems less
likely right now. Then again, NYC real estate is rife with people saying
"That's crazy!", only to find that a couple years later it's normal or even
cheap.

~~~
daeken
> I'll note too that I'm a bit skeptical of the $3000 / month charge for micro
> apartments; even in Williamsburg, new, conventional one-bedroom apartments
> were $3200 – $3,5000 / month last summer.

Yeah, that seems unlikely to fly. I was paying $1700/mo for my place, on the
ground floor in Alphabet City (11th between B and C, specifically); not the
most desirable place in Manhattan, but definitely not a cheap area.

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brianbreslin
Semi related was this article about using tiny prefab homes to solve
homelessness.

[https://collectively.org/en/article/size-does-matter-how-
the...](https://collectively.org/en/article/size-does-matter-how-the-tiny-
house-movement-is-solving-the-homeless-crisis)

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ryanckulp
I live 2 blocks from here and pay $2,200 for a larger studio. Not sure how
this is a good deal at $2-3k.

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wbsun
After reading the HN comments, I just realize that the 'apartment' has really
different scales for married (or family) and unmarried people. Unmarried
people are likely sharing units and hence pay much less than married or
families.

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santaclaus
Reminds me of: [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042869/tiny-homes-big-
problems-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042869/tiny-homes-big-problems-
portlandias-perfect-send-up-of-microliving)

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brianbreslin
How do these compare in size to a shipping container? In the rendering this is
what the last image reminded me of.

That seems so crazy expensive for such a small space not adjacent to a metro
station.

~~~
unwind
From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#Types](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#Types),
we can see that the standard "20-foot" container which I assume is what you're
thinking of is (internally, since we're comparing with other housing) 18.7 by
7.7 foot, so the total area is just 144 square feet.

Note: computing the above was horrible, how are you supposed to enter 18′ 8
13⁄16″ * 7′ 8 19⁄32″ (the dimensions as given in Wikipedia's table) into a
calculator?

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JDiculous
What a rip-off. I don't know why anybody would pay for those apartments when
you can get a better deal in Manhattan.

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nkg
That's doing less with more. New types of housing should be designed to
improve quality of life/ecological footprint. Spending that much to live
inside a matchbox can't be ok.

