I’m dipping my feet in
I’m dipping my feet in the volatile waters of property ownership in San Francisco so I was very interested when I saw a link to a story about Microflats on Caterina.net. Apparently, a London architecture firm has borrowed a page from house boat design and packed an entire apartment into 350 square feet. The design is being harolded as an affordable quality housing solution in urban centers, a puzzle only slightly less complicated than the Riddle of the Sphinx.
Cramming a lot in a small space is a lesson I should heed immediately. But affordable? Surely you jest. I’ve only been looking for a little while but I’ve had to quickly acknowledge that I will be morgaging the next several generations of my decendants so that I may have my couch in a different room from the refrigerator. What I would pay for a 2 bedroom condo right here would buy me an airport and a fleet of helicopters in my hometown. San Francisco is 7 miles by 7 miles. For 750,000 people. That’s it. That means that what space there is is all tall, thin, rectangular and locked behind a door. Small wonder the Victorian house caught on so quickly here. And yes, I know, you visited San Francisco once and thought they were sooooo beautiful. I did too until I considered buying a floor in one.
Victorians are layed out like this: One long hallway with rooms branching off it, like a railroad car. It made perfect sense 150 years ago when it was considered very impolite to come into the parlor wearing your dressing gown and wives worked hard to keep their husbands out of chambers with a “feminizing” influence. Each room’s activities were seperate, locked away from one another. Open space meant too much mixing of sin and virtue.
Call me a heretic but I’m into open. I find it inviting, homey even, when I can see a friend reading in the living room from the kitchen, or the toaster toasting while sitting on the corner of my bed. Open design to me say this is a space to be lived in, not to put forth the proper image to the neighbors.
And yes, there are more open floor plans in San Francisco. The dot-com boom created a whole rash of snazzo condo building with big windows, high ceilings and other such extravagence. But for pete’s sakes, you can get a Kohler sink fixture and granite countertop anywhere these days. If I want a home that looks like it was built five minutes ago in a suburban housing development, why don’t I get one in suburban housing development at half the price?
Because I want to live here, that’s why. I didn’t haul myself half way across the country to the greatest city in the world, to wave at it from 15 miles down the freeway. I want to live IN IT. And I’m just now realizing what sort of sacrifics that will entail.