Unit Design for the Economic Realities of Urban Living
Rachel Cowen AIA, WELL AP, LEED AP
committed to design’s ability to address the challenges of the future
Cities across the country have experienced unprecedented demand for housing paired with a sharp decrease in affordability. Vibrant urban centers with cultural amenities and natural beauty attract people willing to pay more for those lifestyle benefits. The concentration of high paying tech jobs across Cascadia’s Silicon Forest has enabled workers to afford more expensive housing and insufficient supply leads many of them to spend a higher proportion of income on rent. Per capita, income in King County increased by nearly 50% from 2010 to 2020, while the population grew by almost 15% from 1.93 to 2.27 million residents. While rising incomes attracted development over the past decade, demand continues to outpace new construction, making affordability a key concern. To keep multifamily market rents more attainable, there has been downward pressure on unit size. Nationally, the average unit size in new multifamily housing has decreased nearly 6% over the last decade, with the sharpest drop occurring in 2022 according to a recent study by RentCafe.com. The Pacific Northwest displaced California in offering the country’s smallest average size of new apartments in 2022, at 776 square feet – 111 square feet smaller than the national average. Seattle claims the title of smallest new unit sizes in the U.S., with an average of 659 square feet, a 5% decrease over the past decade. This reduction in square footage also impacts the types of units entering the market – studios and one-bedroom apartments reached a historically high ratio of 57% in 2022.
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Trends versus preferences
Multifamily developers turned to amenities as a differentiator to attract tenants and compensate for smaller unit sizes. However, the post-pandemic reality has shifted this focus. Gensler's 2022 Residential Experience Index Survey found that unit spaciousness was a top priority after affordability and quality in eight out of nine North American and international markets. When asked what they'd be willing to give up for a reduction in rent, the majority of respondents said indoor and outdoor, multipurpose, amenity spaces. Outranking on-site amenities are the offerings in the surrounding neighborhood, specifically access to food and nature. Grocery stores were cited by 70%, followed by restaurants (42%), green spaces/parks (42%) and retail shops (33%). One notable exception to amenity trade-offs was parking. Although Seattle dropped any requirement to provide parking several years ago, on-site parking was a top priority by respondents in the Seattle market, and in the top two desired offerings in six of the nine markets surveyed.
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Spaciousness shouldn’t be confused with unit size
The vast majority of survey respondents’ satisfaction with their home was directly linked to qualities inside their unit, outweighing non-unit building factors and the surrounding neighborhood. Personal living space ?– the unit – is by far the most important factor when choosing a place to live. While size and perceived spaciousness is important, quality construction and design outranked spaciousness in our survey, indicating that superior unit design greatly impacts tenant satisfaction. To address spaciousness, 9-foot ceilings have become the de facto standard in both mid-rise and high-rise multi-family buildings. The feeling of spaciousness created by that one move has proven critical as unit size has crept downward. If lofty ceilings are commonly expected, what other factors can differentiate a development? Flexible and creative unit layouts, allowing the same footprint to accommodate changing tenant needs over time, have great potential to attract and retain tenants.
Bedrooms, if provided, are required prescriptively by code to be located on an exterior wall with a window providing light and air. In many jurisdictions, a bedroom can be located away from the exterior as long as it has mechanical ventilation and artificial lighting, or simply is open to the main living area. Because of the proportions of many full or half-block building sites in urban centers, floor plate configurations often necessitate deep, narrow units with interior bedrooms. The popularity, or at least acceptability, of this configuration has been borne out in the market, with nearly half of those queried in our survey saying they would consider a rent reduction if they had the option to transform their unit to one with an interior bedroom. As a response to smaller unit sizes, another trend in unit design is the urban or junior one-bedroom, offering a dedicated sleeping area rather than a fully enclosed bedroom, and often separated from the main living space by moveable partitions.?
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Changing nature of live/work
Since the pandemic, working remotely has become a common alternative to daily commuting to and from an office. In 2022 nearly 30% of our survey respondents worked remotely full-time, with just under 20% going to the office every day. Although the balance has evened out recently, more than half still prefer a “hybrid” work model. Paired with smaller unit sizes, providing accommodation for in-unit remote work is not easy. The key driver in design is flexibility – providing options that address individual preferences tailored to how people want to live, making every available square foot of space useable and purposeful:
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Customization with standardized components
How can unit design meet tenants’ desire for spaciousness when unit sizes are trending downward?? When a unit turns over, or when someone’s life situation changes, can a unit configuration be changed to match new needs? Interchangeable components such as millwork solutions in lieu of fixed walls could be a viable solution.
From an efficiency and retention standpoint, standardization of unit dimensions to accommodate adaptability is essential. Limiting the number of unit types and maximizing repetition can enable faster design, permitting, and construction, as well as provide a consistent framework for installing a menu of interior components. Parcel sizes in the Seattle market commonly result in floor plates that are too deep for ideal unit dimensions, limiting standardized unit stacking and requiring costly MEP offsets and structural transfers. This may mean the zoning envelope may not always be maximized; however, greater rewards in livability and resident satisfaction could lead to faster lease-ups and less turnover, thereby increasing long-term profitability. Multifamily residential design is becoming more equitable and accessible through updates to IBC 2021/2017 ICC A117.1, which increases clearances in Type A bathrooms, entryways, clear floor areas, and around bedroom perimeters. These units will likely increase in size – a pressure point on decreasing unit square footage – but can allow tenants to remain in a unit longer term.
Future residential development needs to respond to new priorities of city dwellers, such as innovative unit design and valuable neighborhood connectivity through contextual and inclusive design. In Cascadia housing markets undergoing unprecedented demand, the properties that will thrive regardless of market conditions will be the ones that can adapt to people’s needs, which is the true measure of successful design.
Blog Contributors:
Rachel Cowen?is Senior Project Architect in the Gensler Seattle Multifamily Studio. She loves people and the planet equally and designing enriching experiences that help solve the climate crisis.
Marissa Brown?is a Senior Project Architect in the Gensler Seattle Multifamily Studio. She loves cities, has practiced in five of them across the country, and feels lucky to have landed in Seattle.
Steve Nordlund?is a Technical Director in the Gensler Seattle Multifamily Studio. He is a Northwest native and comes from a family with history in the building industry.