NYC design competition for "micro" apartments about 300 s.f. in size

The project is called "adAPT NYC."  (Press release)

While the city intends to build an entire building of micro-apartments, see "Efficiencies Wanted; Emphasis on Efficient" from the New York Times, I think it makes more sense to mix "housing types" within "multiunit" buildings, not just different types of apartments/housing units segregated-offered by building.

From the article:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a city-sponsored competition to design an apartment building full of “micro-units” with 275 to 300 square feet of living space. Each would include a kitchen and a bathroom, but no closet.


City officials said they hoped the building would become a prototype for a new model of tiny, but affordable, housing.

For example, you can have a multiunit building where the lower floor apartments are set up like rowhouses, while other floors can include the equivalent of micro apartments, managed Single Room Occupancy housing, and "regular" apartments.

There would still be separated use by floor, but within a building, so not functioning in the way that separated uses traditionally function in neighborhoods and commercial districts, with wide swathes of various monouses (single family detached housing vs. industrial vs. commercial vs. garden apartments vs. high density multiunit, etc.).






The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development will hold a pre-submission conference for potential design teams on July 31, 2012 at the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Architecture.

The deadline for proposal submissions is September 14, 2012.

-- Download the RFP at the adAPT NYC RFP webpage

Also see "Waterfront housing formula: views, viable rents, very little space: Mayor pushes micro-units to lure young to S. Boston" from the Boston Globe and "Crammed Into Cheap Bunks, Dreaming of Future Digital Glory" from the New York Times.