Design for Urbanization: Micro-living for a Densifying Future
Introduction
That’s the statistic of people expected to live in an urban setting by the year 2050. According to the United Nations, 2.5 billion people are projected to migrate to an urban centre in the next 30 years. As the trend of urbanization accelerates at unprecedented rates in cities across Canada and around the world, our strategy for tackling densification through design must begin to match it. With planners, developers, architects, and interior designers playing their respective parts in shaping the future cities we inhabit, we must collectively work toward promoting sustainable typologies; furthermore, we must establish new frameworks of design that better utilize space as it becomes increasingly limited, and evermore exorbitant for the everyday Canadian.
In discussing the future of urbanization within the Canadian landscape, we can look to Toronto as a prime case study. With nearly 330,000 new migrants to the city in 2019 alone, we have begun to see — in the past decade — a strong and rapid increase in shared living spaces — from condominiums to townhouses. While Toronto real estate is thriving as a market and business practice as a result of an increased demand for the metropolitan lifestyle and the convenience of urban living, the majority of those comprising Canada’s largest tax bracket — the middle class — are finding it increasingly difficult to find their footing to purchase a home — let alone a studio apartment in the big city. For this reason, condos are becoming taller yet the individual unit’s footprint smaller.
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For Canadian history in particular, it is an unprecedented era for architecture in which we, as human beings and as consumers, are actively willing to pay more for less. However, real estate trends and statistics like the above mentioned undoubtedly indicate that the generational shift has been made from ownership to share-ship — with everything from Uber to HelloFresh to TaskRabbit. Thus, it must be proposed that, perhaps, this shift from single-family-three-story homes to borderline micro-apartments is ultimately a good thing. The economic and environmental benefits of micro-living become rather palpable when one’s biased distaste for the idea is removed and facts and environmental factors are analyzed in conjunction with this design typology.
As urbanization becomes our new normal, it becomes evident that the concept of micro-living is one that can easily slot into a large city’s setting to support the community’s collective needs. While less occupiable private square footage in metropolis may seem like a compromise for some, for many the appeal lies in the luxury of on-demand services, experiences, and goods in place of the traditional pantry full of canned goods, or half empty shed storing tools you use once a year. With this cycle of shareship being sustainable in and of itself, its presence in conjunction with the widespread introduction of mirco-living will amplify the benefits of both practices in urban settings. Ultimately, the economy becomes stronger as our wallets are invested back into the community rather than into the ownership of things merely to occupy space in the grossly inflated asset of real estate.
How Much Space is Enough Space?
Once we begin to look at micro-living as a new standard of urban living in the near future rather than a lifestyle trend chosen by those who have the financial option, we can then begin to consider and articulate the needs of the average urban user through design. According to David Gordon, Director of Urban and Regional Planning at Queen’s University, “the Millennial generation…are starting to [settle down and] have kids in the downtown” (Maclean’s, 2017).
Consequently, one must beg the question:
How much space is enough space?
Of course, with building and cultural standards differing around the world, it is difficult to pinpoint a single answer to this query without adequate experimental research and cross-analysis with psychological and health effects of varyingly sized living quarters.
However to set a basis, a micro-apartment is often considered less than 400 square feet of a single room space which acts as a multi-functioning zone. To a large portion of the Canadian population who grew up in suburbia, this may seem radical; And in some cases, like the 4 square foot Hong Kong cage homes, they would be right. However, one would be equally just to say that the 2500 square foot single family home is excessive and ineffective in designing with people as a benchmark.
In a study of home usage, published by the University of California, the research mapped the single-family home usage of thirty-two middle class families. As seen in their findings, only a small fraction of the square footage saw regular use, rendering the substantial remainder dead space, and demonstrating that traditional North American housing topologies are well beyond what is necessary. Furthermore when compared with other countries, it is immediately apparent that Canada consistently ranks among the top three highest for average home size — alongside the United States, and Australia. Meanwhile almost everywhere else in the world has adapted to smaller footprints — but perhaps, better design solutions.
Thus, as the confrontation of urbanization prod us to challenge such conventions of the past, designers and architects are realizing that the smaller the space, the more valuable it is. Based on data published by Urbanation Inc. for City of Toronto, the average size of resale condominium apartments in Toronto has been trending downward since 1996; The average one bedroom unit which stood at 1087 square feet 24 years ago is now 636 square feet as of February 2020.
Consequently, in view of the global variance in average living square footage, whatever the true numerical value of enough space is, it is sufficient to say that it can be significantly less than what is readily on the Canadian market today.
Design Solutions
While qualifiable micro-apartments exist in Toronto today, the issue is that they aren’t designed. As real estate brokers and developers speed to complete soulless condo after condo with more budget spent on the amenities than the living spaces themselves, it is most often the interior design and finesse of each individual condo unit that is neglected. Fortunately, with the urgency of living demand rising to far greater measures in places like Hong Kong, Japan, New York City, to San Fransisco, architects and interior designers across the globe have taken on the challenge of introducing innovative and sustainable design solutions to their respective urban landscapes.
Rather than leaving single-room units as one open space, they are turning their attention to creating a sense of compartmentalization and partition within an existing room with multi-function, space saving solutions. To fully utilize increasingly small footprints, we must activate and address all six sides of a space rather than merely four elevations. Not only is it important to allocate programming, it is also paramount to consider how changes in lighting, height, depth, and scale can dramatically alter a user’s experience within the the same four sides of drywall.
A Little Design’s micro apartment in Taipei, of only 237 square feet, illustrates the capacity of designing a fully functioning long term living environment by clever solutions to their client’s needs by means of built-in furnishing and compact spaces. Nonetheless, there is exceedingly substantial storage as well as open floor space — and most importantly each area is its own.
Yet, there are smaller, equally well-designed micro-living spaces still. However, Canada has not taken the queue. Our country’s smallest condo unit sits at 286 square feet — larger than many other condo units around the world, yet much more poorly designed. In regards to micro-spaces, Western architects and designers must begin to adapt and accept that the popularized idea of “open concept living” is not the best choice. As evident in the Montreal based unit, one is merely left with less occupiable floor space and unrelated spatial functions bleeding into one another as a result of careless design. Hence, the significance of thoughtful design becomes obvious when comparing the two interiors from Taiwan and Canada, respectively.
On the lower-end, consumer spectrum of micro-living, multifunctional furniture and smart furniture is emerging around the world. An American startup brand Ori, gaining traction in design media, is developing an offering of multi-functioning, partition furnishings which operate on robotic systems to house a retractable bed. Their all in one partition system transforms studio spaces in the same way that built-in solutions like A Little Design’s does — however their approach is to bring this furniture typology as an option to the masses. Recently partnered with furniture giant, IKEA, Ori has combined their vision and technology with IKEA’s space-saving, consumer friendly furniture. In this iteration it again functions through a robotic system, however rather than moving the bed, Ori/IKEA’s fusion uses ”mechanics, electronics and software to create [an entire] moving bank of furniture” (Pownall, 2019). Despite not being the first to invent smart furniture, Ori and IKEA are first to market. With an international audience of millennials and an increasing marketplace for compact design, smart furniture is looking like a viable solution for the future.
Adaptation
As Canada slowly adopts to the new design typologies for urbanization, there are undoubtedly limitations to what is achievable, and to what is permitted by law, and what society is willing to accept. Furthermore, it is important to discuss the methods in which micro-apartment modules and built-ins are constructed, and be cognizant of how these modes evolve the Canadian economy.
In order for successful micro-living spaces to evolve sustainably in cities like Toronto, developers, architects, and interior designers alike must consider a simplification of condominium units and their materiality. However, this way of thinking about simplification is not synonymous with thoughtlessness — in fact it opposes it; As a whole, micro-living promotes purposeful design. Thus, simple, homogeneous, and locally sourced materials with durable, recyclable, and sustainable qualities should be considered at a greater regard. In doing so, we can not only ensure better material costs, but also lower labour costs as the simple yet beautiful modular designs of micro-living spaces allow for repetitive and automated pre-fabrication processes. Additionally, as the size of our land footprint decreases and our usage per square foot increases, condominiums have the potential to become less expensive — suggesting that should micro-living be quickly rolled out through urban centres like Toronto, there would be a large portion of the population who would support it.
This being said, it would take more than the general population’s support to introduce micro-apartments as the new standard. Such developments would have to dance creatively around Canadian building regulations — which are not only stringent on minimum standards of building but ultimately “contain several cost-pushing articles” (Affordable Housing, 2018, p.30). For instance, as done by a community in Munich, Germany, creatively interpreting the building code can mean offering car-sharing in order to reduce required parking spaces. Yet, despite these valiant efforts, the larger battle for providing more and better affordable housing such as micro-living spaces is dependant on urban land policy in which “the actual cost driver for housing is not the high building standards, but the price of land” (Affordable Housing, 2018, p.16). Ultimately, architects and interior designers cannot change policy. However, there are a multitude of contributions and considerations that can be made by the innovative makers of our city landscapes to help create a better urban world.
Author’s Note
As I finish this article, having spent over a month in self-isolation during the pandemic of COVID-19 in my small — but not micro — condo unit, I more than ever recognize and applaud thoughtful design for the increasingly small urban square footage. In this time, my single open concept living space has become an office, studio, workshop, infirmary, kitchen, lounge, bedroom, and a scatter storage space all in one. Needless to say, the lack of programming and inherit spatial organization has rendered me disjointed from routine. Yet, I am grateful for this little piece of solitude that is mine in a world that is infinitely more chaotic outside of these four walls.
Thus to conclude, I will continue to dream — not of a larger, grander space for my mind and my things to scatter even further — but rather of solutions to my modest abode in which I can find secluded comfort in my bed, knowing that rest will not be overshadowed by work.
But that it is only a partition away.
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