Microhousing: The Sustainable Trend in Urban Living?

Last month, I had the pleasure of popping into Dwell on Design in downtown Manhattan to hear NYC-based GRO Architects talk about their micro-housing project happening in Jersey City, NJ.

As someone who's interested in sustainability, needless to say, I was all ears. Indeed, had it not been for an incredibly time-crunched day, I would have stuck around to chat with them afterward.

With a unique design aesthetic, a knack for packing a lot into incredibly small spaces, and an unwavering vigilance for sustainable products, GRO is a firm I needed to learn more about.

The firm has a rather impressive building design portfolio – everything from New Haven, CT’s Urban Museum of Modern Architecture to the SKN house in the lovely escape of Skeneatlas, NY. There’s also a phenomenal TEDx talk by partner Richard Garber on scalable design that address population density challenges (below).

But what started as a simple desire to learn more about GRO Architects turned into a wild fascination with micro-housing projects as a whole.

Micro and Tiny Houses

The tiny house movement is a pretty hot topic right now... and for seemingly countless reasons. Millennials dig the compact, minimalistic lifestyle. And as the traditional employment market continues to struggle, freelancing continues to grow as an option that can be done from anywhere via computer. So, smaller living through tiny houses (or micro apartments) offers a comparatively low cost alternative to homebuying with potentially lower risk.

However, rather ironically, tiny houses are more suited for suburban locales where space is more abundant and building codes are (typically) less confining. But with people increasingly gravitating toward urban areas, it only seems natural to apply the whole tiny-house concept into more scalable, multi-unit complex’s in cities, right? That’s exactly what GRO and a few other architectural firms are doing around the country – and the world. And it’s really neat.

Designers are across the U.S. are conceptualizing and building properties that feature dozens of tiny living apartments (also referred to as “pods,” "Apodments", “small efficiency dwelling units,” and "micro-houses"). And I do mean tiny – usually less than 350 sq. ft – with some barely larger than a city parking space. The idea is that in urban locations, the city itself is the backyard. People don’t want to be in their houses... Rather, they want to be experiencing all that their metropolis has to offer.

Why Aren’t Micro-Units Popping up like Daisies?

Talk of such complexes has popped up in a number of the hottest American cities – from Seattle to Boston to New York.

And while many have welcomed the initial "nano housing" proposals with open arms – especially prospective occupants looking for relief from cost-related population density problems – many of them have ultimately ended up stalled into oblivion by city planning and zoning boards or quite simply shot down altogether. In part this has been because of suspicions that some private developers have looked at such micro-complexes as an opportunity to increase occupancy without lowering lease rates.

However, GRO Architects’ project in New Jersey is exemplifying how many dynamic forces – private parties, public interest groups, and government organizations – can work together to find a real solution to this global problem. Hopefully, their success will develop a yellow brick road for other cities and developers around the country to follow.