Blogs Nov 7, 2014 at 8:15 am

Imagine a Columbia Center Packed with Micro-Apartments

Charles Mudede
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Comments

1
Hyperslum.
WFM on November 7, 2014 at 8:54 AM Report this
2
Cabrini Green without any of the charm.
on November 7, 2014 at 9:02 AM Report this
3
And it would be a delicious target for terrorists, Charles. Not to mention you would have to take multiple elevator rides on a daily basis. You don't just go from 1 to 37, for example, you go up by express to certain floors and then take the "local" one. Imagine that with a load of groceries in your arms. It would be a miserable existance.
Phoebe in Wallingford on November 7, 2014 at 9:07 AM Report this
4
You mean 3-4 Carbrini-Green buildings stacked on top of each other?
Banna on November 7, 2014 at 9:09 AM Report this
5
"... and have cafes, bars, sex shops, and play areas for children."



I think you may be sharing too much here.
Sam Levine on November 7, 2014 at 9:09 AM Report this
6
Charles, you realize you could pace things a bit better when you give your examples.

have cafes, bars, sex shops, and play areas for children
could become
have play areas for children, cafes, bars, and even sex shops for adults

which would avoid the creepy juxtaposition of sex shops and child play areas
ChefJoe on November 7, 2014 at 9:10 AM Report this
8
It sounds like hell.

Why not people-sized apartments for all the people (you know, human beings? Not cattle?) you expect to be living in there.
treehugger on November 7, 2014 at 9:13 AM Report this
9
@5 Thank god for the Oxford comma.
Backyard Bombardier on November 7, 2014 at 9:20 AM Report this
10
See it in action in the underrated film Dredd (not the Stalone one).
Westside forever on November 7, 2014 at 9:24 AM Report this
11
more do what I say not what I do bs from the stranger.
j2patter on November 7, 2014 at 9:50 AM Report this
12
Microapartments might work very well for adults, or even for childless couples, and I know that the Japanese manage to live comfortably in apartments of much smaller square footage than the American average, but trying to put 1 or 2 adults and children in a unit of 250-350 square feet sounds absolutely hellish!
Clayton on November 7, 2014 at 9:57 AM Report this
13
What exactly would one "manufacture" on a floor of a massive apartment building which would not have large amounts of waste generation, could get all the machinery/goods in and out easily without frustrating residents, and would be quite enough to not disturb residents?



Maybe these things do not occur to people who live in single family homes, I dunno.


Theodore Gorath on November 7, 2014 at 10:00 AM Report this
14
Imagine instead a Columbia Tower sized apartment building, but with standard 1Br or 2Br units. A 1.5m sq ft, that's 2,500 500-700 sq ft apartments at a pretty livable density. No need to go micro to get exceptional density while retaining quality of life.
Searailleur on November 7, 2014 at 10:01 AM Report this
15
@3: phoebe stop being a wuss.

you have a point about the elevator rides.

Max Solomon on November 7, 2014 at 10:02 AM Report this
16
Charles would be happy in Kowloon, apparently...

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/11/an…

(or happy if YOU lived and worked in Kowloon)
south downtown on November 7, 2014 at 10:08 AM Report this
17
What if the daughter of the moron who lives next door uses hair product that smells like ass? And then when you knock on the wall and say, "Hey, can I get a courtesy flush over there?" they claim racism. No, good fences make good neighbors.
on November 7, 2014 at 10:12 AM Report this
18
Sounds like the Darco Arcology in SimCity 2000.
decidedlyodd on November 7, 2014 at 10:22 AM Report this
19
So we should live like this:



https://www.youtube.com/guide_ajax?debug…
jsera on November 7, 2014 at 10:24 AM Report this
20
... it won't work, until Americans can grow up and treat their neighbors better. We just too shitty to each other at the moment.
johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt on November 7, 2014 at 10:39 AM Report this
21
So Charles, how is life in the micro-apartment you and your family live in? Is it all you hoped it would be?
Cato the Younger Younger on November 7, 2014 at 10:42 AM Report this
22

You know what you get when you have "floor after floor of people living as closely together as possible?"

Lots of excrement "that's radiant from the concentration of so many humans"

They're gonna need to fix Bertha so she can dig a sewer line to drain Charles' dream home...
SuperSteve on November 7, 2014 at 10:47 AM Report this
23
Scheisse, messed up the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge18Ieyi9…
jsera on November 7, 2014 at 11:00 AM Report this
24
Sounds like an old school housing project to me.
TheBadSeed131313 on November 7, 2014 at 12:05 PM Report this
25
@18 Yes, an arcology is the ultimate building of this sort. A building that many people don't need to leave on any given day and some may spend a lifetime entirely within. An arcology should contain housing, businesses, parks, shops, schools, medical facilities, nursing homes, etc.
fletc3her on November 7, 2014 at 12:20 PM Report this
26
I immediately thought of that too, @7.
Matt from Denver on November 7, 2014 at 12:59 PM Report this
27
Micro apartments ... ppfsh, that's so 2013. The wave of the future is going to be "Housing Pods". Tenants will be awarded their very bathtub sized pod where they'll be suspended in a luxurious biotic gel solution whilst having their consciousness uploaded to the cloud. It's basically like the Matrix, but with more goo. You could stack over 87,000 hipsters into a building like that.
Spindles on November 7, 2014 at 1:25 PM Report this
28
you're gonna need a HUGE parking garage, chuck.
tainte on November 7, 2014 at 1:35 PM Report this
29
@25, we actually have an arcology here in King County. It's a very large rental housing/condo development in Federal Way, where drug dealers and prostitutes "couch crash" and get all of their food delivered to them. It is a slum, a ghetto, the region's Mos Eisley Spaceport.

To see the reality of an arcology as opposed to the fantasy, just go down and visit Camelot. You'll get a healthy dose of reality very quickly.
on November 7, 2014 at 2:31 PM Report this
30
Look at the HOA dues for large buildings. Buildings of that scale—even a modest tower—are incredibly expensive to maintain and operate. Even a small unit would likely be out of reach to anyone of average means.

Seattle is never going to reach shoebox-apartment density, and it doesn't need buildings that will be torn down in 30 years. What it needs are proper 1 and 2 bedroom units built well enough that families and singles and seniors can all share walls without considering urban living a phase before "settling down."

Dougsf on November 7, 2014 at 2:36 PM Report this
31
That sounds fucking dreadful. Building of which Seattleites' dreams? Not mine.
Compass Rose on November 7, 2014 at 4:15 PM Report this
32
Reminds me of a print I saw hanging in Victor's Coffee in Redmond: http://www.megaliteproject.com
L_Sid on November 7, 2014 at 4:22 PM Report this
33
When I was a student at Boston University, for a time I lived in Warren Towers, a three-pronged monstrosity which at the time was supposedly one of the largest dormitories in the world. It had a restaurant and a 24 hour convenience store on the ground floor. We students sometimes spent the whole weekend inside, going to study rooms to work quietly, down to the convenience store for snacks, seeing movies at the Warren Towers movie nights for dates, etc...



One of my dearest friends from that era lives in what she calls now the grown up version of Warren Towers, an apartment complex in Portland, Maine with a similar feeling. Sometimes these things work.
Drunken Housewife on November 7, 2014 at 5:15 PM Report this
34
Kowloon was a shit hole for the most part. I've seen video of the food manufacturing facilities and it was terrifying. And Theodore Gorath is right, it sucked to live near a manufacturing site. Fumes, noise, trash, vermin...

Which isn't to say there's not a possibility of making high-density, multi-use buildings. But you have to do it carefully and Kowloon Walled City's unregulated mega-slum isn't a good model, no matter how much some people like to romanticize it.
dwightmoodyforgetsthings on November 7, 2014 at 6:10 PM Report this
35
I grew up in an apartment complex of 10,000 people. Its just another place. My parents liked it, I didn't. That's about as old as the news can get.
Bristen Bronfen on November 7, 2014 at 6:14 PM Report this
36
As terrible as it was (apparently), I couldn't help but want to live in one of the block towers from Dredd. The smartest part of the film waa not depicting the vertical favela as some kind hellscape or broken utopia, but functioning human habitat. Teenagers hanging out, kids going to school, people doing what (little) work was available -- life was happening all the time, everywhere.
chaseacross on November 7, 2014 at 6:20 PM Report this
37
@34,
aww, come now. I'm sure manufacturing fish balls smells wonderful. Most are made from surimi, the "chicken McNugget pink slime" of fish.
ChefJoe on November 7, 2014 at 8:21 PM Report this
38
Charles, I agree we are social beings and would be better off in a cooperative society. But this vision lacks connection with the natural world.
Upchuck on November 7, 2014 at 11:58 PM Report this
39
city in pyramid !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRsp6DhxL…


on November 8, 2014 at 8:28 AM Report this
40
I wouldn't want to live on the floor under the fish ball factory. And this post plays right into the horror stories of Communism that my father regaled me with in my youth...the profound disregard for the individual. Maybe he was right. No like.
Jubilation T. Cornball on November 8, 2014 at 10:00 AM Report this
41
And where is the food going to come from, to feed all the people in that gleaming tower?

Each building like this, housing 5,000 people, will require a matching megafarm spanning ten square miles.

This dream can only survive if you assume farms are "nature," if you pretend industrialized agriculture is not a form of urban sprawl.
robotslave on November 8, 2014 at 10:25 AM Report this
42
@41) i will admit to you this is an important point. sprawl is inevitable. but it's better to have one form of sprawl rather than two.
Charles Mudede on November 8, 2014 at 2:12 PM Stranger Staff
43
Sounds like the urban housing in Callenbach's Ecotopia. The corporates were kicked out and all the towers were commandeered as living and small manufacturing space, freeing up land in the cities to be reforested. He made it sound very pleasant. Folks could take the elevator down to the street, walk a mile or two into the woods and catch a deer for dinner!
one-cup on November 8, 2014 at 3:38 PM Report this
44
Like a cruise ship stood on end.
Michael of the Green on November 9, 2014 at 11:54 AM Report this
45
This topic of density is so important to Charles that he lives in a single family house.

Put up or shut up, Mudede.
tkc on November 10, 2014 at 12:11 PM Report this

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