

[Inside all 302 square feet of the model unit at Carmel Place. All photos by Max Touhey for Curbed]

The first thing you notice when you enter the model unit at Carmel Place, the city's first all-micro-unit building, is how big it feels. Despite measuring only 302 square feet, the apartment seems much larger, thanks to clever staging and the use of transformative furniture, which can turn a living room into a bedroom with the pull of a lever. "It's not just one room—this functions as a multitude of rooms," explains Tobias Oriwol, a project developer at Monadnock Development. But there's also a palpable sense that the parties involved in the building, which won the city's My Micro NY contest in 2014, are determined to get this real estate experiment right. "There's so much attention on this project, and the stakes are so high for small living," explains Chris Bledsoe, the founding partner of Stage 3 Properties, which is working with Monadnock on the building. "It was really important for us to show what we know: that small space does not have to mean a degradation in quality of life."

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