Life in the city

Last week I was surprised to hear my friend’s story of struggling to find a decent sized (and priced) one bedroom apartment in the densely populated city of San Francisco. Understandably, with its concentration of  tech startups (Twitter, Pandora and Yelp just to name a few), cool summers, historic multicultural neighborhoods and the majestic Golden Gate Bridge…everyone wants a piece of the action! The challenge in SF and similar cities like New York, Singapore and Hong Kong is creating as much livable space as possible in a limited land area.

This battle for a piece of the city life gives designers an opportunity to come up with clever solutions, as shown in the two videos below. The first one shows an example of a 344 sq feet apartment in Hong Kong which has been designed by its owner Gary Chang (an architect) and can be transformed to 24 different configurations!

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The second video shows an apartment in New York for a teacher who is inspired by Japanese compact living and feels most comfortable in his 450 sq ft studio apartment. Read more about this New York apartment over at Gizmodo.

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Benefits of pocket-sized living

It’s inspiring to see these compact apartments and the benefits they offer:

• Transformable – features such as sliding walls incorporating beds/storage give these apartments multiple configurations
• Customized to the user’s needs
• Encourage the owner to look into their lifestyle and only keep spaces and things which have a purpose in their life – a great way to enjoy clutter-free living!

You may not be able to manage a family in such compact spaces but these are great solutions for couples or single people who would like to enjoy city life on a budget!

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