New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced the winner of adAPT NYC - a city-sponsored competition that challenged developer-led teams to design an innovative micro-apartment that responds to 21st century housing problems. With an all time high of 8.4 million people, and an expected million more by 2030, New York City’s shortfall of affordable one and two person apartments is continuing to grow at a staggering rate. In an effort to solve this imbalance, the winner of adAPT NYC will build an experimental project on a piece of city-owned land in Kips Bay, Manhattan, that has been alleviated from the 1987 density restriction that requires all new apartments to be greater than 400 square feet.

“The growth rate for one- and two-person households greatly exceeds that of households with three or more people, and addressing that housing challenge requires us to think creatively and beyond our current regulations,” said Bloomberg.

So, who won adAPT NYC? Find out after the break!

Succeeding 33 international proposals and providing an innovative housing model for New York City’s micro-apartments, a team consisting of Monadnock Development LLC, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation and nARCHITECTS was selected as winner of the adAPT NYC competition. Construction on the pilot project will begin by the end of the year and residents are expected to move in by 2015.

Fairly reminiscent of Claude Prouvé’s Experimental Building of SIRH, the innovative design provides for all the basic needs of a one and two person household in New York. Titled “My Micro NY”, the proposal includes 55 micro-units between 250 and 370 square feet on a well connected site in Manhattan. Here, it will be the first multi-family building to utilized modular construction, as all components will be prefabricated in a facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

The easily replicated prototype will feature flexible interiors with 10 foot ceilings, balconettes, large windows, ample storage and well-designed shared meeting spaces, such as a great lobby for entertaining and a lush rooftop garden.

“We’re thrilled at the chance of designing a housing prototype that will give New Yorkers in small spaces a sense of living in a larger social fabric,” said Eric Bunge, Principal of nARCHITECTS.

As a way to help New Yorkers “think small”, the Museum of the City of New York is opening an exhibit Wednesday called “Making Room: New Housing for New Yorkers.”

This concept is rapidly gaining popularity in many dense cities. Following the footsepts of Tokyo and Hong Kong, who have long offered tiny units, San Francisco recently approved construction of apartments as small as 220 square feet.

via NYC.gov, CBS New York