The Unfolding Apartment: Next Step

An earlier item in this blog, The Unfolding Apartment addressed a crucial trend in small home design: making the most of limited space to enhance daily life, using ingenious technology.

Based on his favorite concept of “exchange”—adapting the same space to a variety of tasks during the day with movable and foldable walls and furniture—architect Michael K. Chen is collaborating with adaptable furniture maker Häfele to expand the concept beyond the microapartment.

The basic unit, 12x16 ft, might constitute a microapartment or part of a co-living or institutional complex. It evolves from a bedroom to a kitchen to an office to a dining area to a nighttime entertainment area, with the required furniture unfolding, folding, or sliding in or out as needed. The hardware that makes all this possible is a Häfele product—in fact, Chen admits to making freelance use of pieces from the Häfele catalog in his design for the original Unfolding Apartment.

He believes that these pieces can be moved and manipulated with relative ease by reasonably able-bodied seniors, with easy-operating pistons and self-closing doors, for example, “but more work is underway to make things effortless and reliable.”

Häfele is also extending the possibilities by venturing into sensor technology and Amazon Echo-based use for supportive living, another key feature of the coming small home trend. “I’m somewhat ambivalent about this right now,” he says, “because of privacy concerns, and I think our culture still has to move more toward general acceptance of this infrastructure.”

In fact Chen still sees this as bleeding-edge, with builders and developers continuing to grapple with the new concepts involved in both designing and marketing high-density, space-saving structures, particularly in downtown areas. “But there’s a lot of serious thought going on in these circles right now and it’s just a matter of time.”

For an idea of the “exchanges” in action, check out Chen’s website.