Are Micro-Apartments a Good Solution to the Affordable-Housing Crisis?

During a recent tour of Carmel Place, New York City’s new micro-apartment complex, Ammr Vandal, project manager for nArchitects, explained how design can generate a sense of roominess in even the smallest spaces. We were standing in the building’s three-hundred-and-two-square-foot second-floor model unit, one of its “mid-size” micros. The other apartments range from two hundred and sixty to three hundred and sixty square feet, all of them featuring a full bath and a compact but complete kitchen. High ceilings are essential, Vandal said, as is lots of natural light; every unit at Carmel Place, which is in midtown Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, has a large window that opens to a Juliet balcony. Vandal’s firm also designed the entry areas to be distinct from the living space. “How do you make something feel bigger? By making it smaller, by dividing it up,” she said. Even the light reflecting off the glass-tile backsplash in the kitchen was meant to play a part in extending the space.