Back in 2007, before envelope A+D's Proxy arrived to deliver us from the misfortune of having to walk inside actual buildings to purchase coffee and $12 juices, the firm won an ideas competition to design parcels M and N, two of the 22 plots plots created after the Central Freeway came down. But the recession held off the project. Now the firm has filed a Preliminary Project Assessment with the Planning Department for a pair of micro-unit buildings on the parcels, which sit on Octavia between Oak and Fell streets, Hoodline reports. Dubbed 300 Octavia, the five-story buildings would house 16 micro-dwellings each, set above ground-floor retail designed to take the edge off living in apartments as small as 370 square feet. (Ideas include a "living room" coffeeshop and a laundromat.) If the project goes forward and the units land on the open market, they could be the first micro-apartments in the city that aren't also a dorm.
Envelope A+D's Douglas Burnham told Hoodline that his firm's proposal includes the possibility that units could be combined, either horizontally for the middle units or vertically in some cases—imagine a four-level, er, macro-unit that's barely 15 feet wide! The proposal's most distinctive architectural feature, Burnham added, is a set of horizontal adjustable shades that would be activated by solar exposure and could also double as a place to mount digital projectors, which sounds sort of compelling and also like a potential challenge to Stanley Saitowitz's recent hogging of all mobile-shade-related buzz.
Approvals with Planning could take approximately a year, and if all goes according to plan, the project could open its doors in about two years.
· envelope A+D [Official Site]
· Two Micro-Unit Mixed-Use Buildings Proposed for Octavia [Hoodline]
· The Micro-Units at the Panoramic Will Make a Very Nice Dorm [Curbed SF]
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