In a city filled with pot-bellied monster homes and barn-sized penthouse condos, the architects of a new Vancouver project have devised a svelte alternative: the micro-loft.
Working with architect Bruce Carscadden and ITC Construction, Reliance Properties has transformed the Burns Block at 18 West Hastings into five floors of affordable compact rental units. “Affordable” in this case means between an average rent of $850 a month, utilities included, for the furnished units. And “compact” means really, really small: between 226 and 291 square feet. That's roughly the size of a monster home's linen closet. Yet tenants quickly snapped up the units when they were first craigslisted in August, and the wait-list endures.
The renovation has yielded 30 units of what has become for Vancouverites a coveted and scarce commodity: downtown mid-price rental housing. In exchange for providing the double-hit of heritage restoration and rental housing, the developers received a density bonus which they transferred to another project elsewhere.
Built a century ago when Hastings Street was the city's main promenade, the Burns Block had devolved into a grotty Single Resident Occupancy hotel. The transformation into midrange rental housing was supported by the City of Vancouver, but sparked some pushback from sporadic protesters fearing wholesale (or, in some cases, any) gentrification of area. Yet the new units are a socio-economic equalizer at least in regard to size: they are even smaller than the 350-sq.-ft. non-market housing units down the street at the redeveloped Woodwards department store.
To create livable spaces in such an insanely small layout, the architects drew upon the City of Vancouver's own 1996 research into the micro-suite concept. Working with architects, city staff had determined that the “critical living qualities” fell into two categories: environmental (view, natural light, security, sound insulation) and spatial (entry threshold, efficiency, storage, flexibility of use, separation of spaces).
Mr. Carscadden and his team devised specific design gestures and strategies to address these essentials. Compact furniture and space-saving appliances were an obvious help: the units' mini-kitchens are equipped with two-burner stoves and counter-height fridges. The interior wall dividing the bathroom from the living area is an plane of translucent glass, which not only makes the living space appear more expansive, but also saves four and a half inches of floor space that a conventional interior wall would have required. Each bathroom door swings open inside the bathroom to double as the shower door, saving more crucial space. And the selection of a compact wall-hung toilet helped not only in terms of literal space, but also the sense of space that you perceive in beholding the unbroken grid of the tiled floor beneath the john. Alas, there are no bathtubs in any of the units—that would have swallowed up, whoosh, at least another four square feet of floor space.
So who, actually, could live in a place like this? Certainly not everyone. Not hoarders, nor party-throwers. A few couples apparently do live in the building, although it seems hard to fathom how any duo beyond the agglutinant first chapter of a love affair could share such a space. The micro-loft concept seems to be made for the contemporary urban monk: people like Andrea Wong, a young hair stylist with a modest income and a fervent wish to live on her own. Wong, who decamped from a Trout Lake-area townhouse she shared with her then-boyfriend, can see her salon door from her sixth-floor window. Her shoe collection is neatly packed in white-canvas boxes stored horizontally atop the kitchenette bulkhead.
