The Atlantic Magazine, December 28 2014 By Henry Grabar
The making of Manhattan's first micro-apartments.
Later this winter, a truck will pick up this prefabricated apartment from a former naval foundry in Brooklyn, carry it over the Manhattan Bridge, and deliver it to a construction site on Manhattan’s East Side. A crane will hoist the unit—and 54 others like it, along with segments of stairways and elevator shafts—into the air and stack them together, creating a nine-story building.
In a city that’s seen just about everything, the undertaking, a collaboration between the firm nArchitects, Monadnock Development, and the Actor’s Fund Housing Development Corporation, will be a novelty twice over. For one thing, this will be the tallest building ever constructed out of prefab modules in Manhattan, and one of the first such apartment buildings in the entire city. The modules—each of which weighs the equivalent of a dozen Ford F-150s—will arrive on East 27th Street virtually move-in ready, with toilets, cabinets, and electrical sockets all in place.
For another, this will be the city’s first “microunit” building. In 2013, its design won a city-sponsored “micro-housing” competition devoted to compact housing for single occupants. (Forty-six percent of Manhattan households are made up of one adult.) The architects, Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, hope that large windows, high ceilings, and floor plans featuring multipurpose living areas—fold-up furniture sold separately—will make the apartments feel more spacious than their 255 to 360 square feet.
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