Making microflats liveable is simply a matter of good design
Hong Kong developers have done a brisk business with microflats, but architects say they can only be liveable with a new approach to design
In a city of sky-high real estate prices and ever-dwindling square footages, affordable housing for many now means a flat smaller than 250 square feet. Far from a purely local phenomenon, however, microflats are a trend in many of the world's most expensive cities, from London to New York to San Francisco, where they have been proposed as solutions for young people looking for places to live.
In Hong Kong, people have been living in microflats for years, often in illegally subdivided apartments in tong lau walk-ups and old warehouses. The Society for Community Organisation says at least 100,000 people are living in rooms as small as 40 square feet, often without proper ventilation or adequate toilet facilities. Many more students and young professionals live in spacious apartments that have been divided into microflats of 100 square feet, each with its own toilet and miniature kitchen.
Bigger, but still controversial, are the Lilliputian apartments built by developers. Last year, Cheung Kong unveiled Mont Vert, a Tai Po estate where 177-square-foot flats had price tags of HK$1.55 million. Despite that, or because of it, those sales have been brisk and other developers seem keen to follow suit.
Many new developments have been edging in the microflat direction anyway; the New York Times recently profiled one 275-square-foot Shau Kei Wan flat with the astonishing headline, "A One-Bedroom Apartment That Could Fit in a Bedroom".
Are microflats liveable? Yes, say architects and designers - but not how they are being built in Hong Kong. "The problem is they've taken a standard flat and just shrunken it to its absolute minimum," says Dylan Baker-Rice, founder of local design firm Affect-T. "The way they're being conceived of now is not sustainable because it's being driven only by cost."
Last year, Affect-T worked on a research project that led to a conceptual design for bamboo microflats inside industrial buildings. It reflects the already pervasive phenomenon of illegal cubicle homes inside old factories.
"It's happening on its own, and there's a beauty to that informality. It's like what happened in the Kowloon Walled City. It continues on, but instead of a walled city it is spread throughout Hong Kong," says Baker-Rice. Unfortunately, without regulation, many of these ad hoc microflats are unsafe, he says. "A lot of them are just horrible."