A design team comprised of Monadnock Development, Actors Fund Housing Development Corp. and nArchitects, has won Mayor Bloomberg’s competition, “adAPT NYC”, to create micro-apartments for New York city dwellers.
The winning unit, called “My Micro NY,” features a 10-foot ceiling and a mini outdoor deck. The units will all be built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and then transported to Manhattan. The first of the pre-fab rentals will be ready by September 2015 and will settle on 27th Street on the east side. The mayor said the project is part of his plan to create or preserve 165,000 affordable homes in the city by 2014 and will create 55 new micro units–with 40 percent slotted to be affordable housing for low and middle-income New Yorkers.
Reportedly about four times the size of a typical prison cell, the mayor had this to say of the diminutive apartment project:
“People from all over the world want to live in New York City, and we must develop a new, scalable housing model that is safe, affordable and innovative to meet their needs.”
New York journalist Greg Pollowitz who writes for Rueters stated, “If the mayor really wants to address the market for apartments in NYC, a hard look a the rent stabilization and rent control laws is needed, too. Not just a relaxation of zoning laws to provide for these tiny units.”
As a New Yorker, I’d have to agree.
