I would like to advance, with appropriate tentativeness, a theory about the right size of apartment for an adult or a couple living together without children. The theory is that the right size is smaller than the prevailing apartment-design discourse assumes, and that the consequences of getting the size wrong — too large, in the direction the prevailing discourse pushes — are larger than most apartment-dwellers realize. The theory is not, I want to emphasize at the outset, a minimalist theory in the recent meaning of the word. It is a theory about what apartments are actually for, what additional space does to the people who occupy it, and how the prevailing discourse has been misled into recommending a kind of space that does not, on examination, produce the effects it is supposed to produce.
The premise of the theory
The premise of the theory is this: an apartment, for adults without children, is not a house. The functions an apartment serves are a subset of the functions a house serves, and the functions that fall outside the subset — the functions of children, of substantial entertaining of large groups, of the storage of substantial accumulations — are functions for which the apartment was not historically designed. The standard apartment of the European urban tradition, which is the apartment I am writing about, was designed for adults conducting an adult life in a city, and the design assumed a degree of compactness that the contemporary apartment market has more or less abandoned in favor of a form that imitates the suburban house at smaller scale.
The imitation has been a mistake. The functions that the imitation gestures toward — the large kitchen, the substantial living room, the additional bedroom that serves as a study or a guest room, the dedicated dining area — are functions that the adult occupant typically does not exercise enough to justify the space, and the space itself has effects on the occupant that the apartment-design discourse does not adequately consider.
What additional space actually does
Additional space, beyond what is required for the actual functions of the adult life, does several specific things to the occupant, and the things are worth setting down.
The additional space requires additional furniture, additional decoration, and additional maintenance, all of which the occupant either provides at additional cost or fails to provide and has to live with the consequence. The empty corner of the second bedroom either fills up with something the occupant has bought to fill it, or it remains visibly empty in a way that makes the room feel underused. Neither outcome is good. The first commits the occupant to expenditure they did not need to make and to objects they did not particularly want. The second produces a daily reminder that the apartment is too large for its purpose.
The additional space also produces, in occupants I have observed at close range, a particular kind of low-grade distraction. The apartment that has more space than the occupant needs becomes a project that the occupant is always in the middle of arranging, decorating, optimizing, or considering. The mental occupation that the larger apartment produces is one of the unexpected costs of the additional space, and the cost is not visible in the financial accounting because it does not show up in the rent or the mortgage.
The additional space, finally, requires additional cleaning, additional heating, additional cooling, and additional time to move through. These are practical costs that are easy to underestimate when one is choosing an apartment. They add up over the years that one lives in the apartment, and they subtract from the time and the attention that the occupant has available for other things.
What the right size actually accommodates
I will set out, briefly, what I think the right size of apartment accommodates, for an adult or a couple. The list is shorter than most readers will expect.
It accommodates a bedroom with a proper bed, room beside the bed for a small table or a chair, and adequate storage for the clothing actually worn. The bedroom does not need to be large. It needs to be quiet, well-ventilated, and adequate for sleep and for the small associated functions.
It accommodates a bathroom that works. The bathroom does not need to be elaborate. It needs to function well, to be well-ventilated, and to be cleanable in a reasonable time. Most apartment bathrooms are adequate. The trend toward elaborate bathrooms is one of the wastes of the apartment-design discourse of the past two decades.
It accommodates a kitchen in which one can cook a meal. The kitchen does not need to be the central feature of the apartment. It needs to be functional — a stove that works, a counter that is large enough to chop vegetables on, a sink that is adequate, storage for the pots and the dishes that are actually used. Most of the dishes that are bought for apartment kitchens are not actually used. The actually-used set is small and fits in a smaller kitchen than the prevailing design assumes.
It accommodates a living room that is sized for the actual use of the living room, which is principally for the occupant or the couple to sit and read or to receive a small number of close friends. The living room does not need to seat ten people, because the apartment does not, in normal use, contain ten people. The living room needs to seat two or three or four comfortably, with a small additional flexibility for the occasional larger gathering.
It accommodates a table at which one can eat dinner. The table can be in the kitchen or in the living room, depending on the floor plan. The table does not need to be in a dedicated dining room. Dedicated dining rooms are, in most apartments, the most underused space in the apartment.
It accommodates the work that the occupant does, if the occupant works at home. This is the function that has expanded substantially in the past decade and that requires honest accommodation in the apartment plan. A desk in the bedroom, a small work corner of the living room, or in some cases a separate small room with a door, depending on the work. The accommodation does not need to be large. It needs to be functional.
That is most of what an apartment, for an adult or a couple, actually does. The list is shorter than most apartment listings would suggest. The square footage required for the list, in compact and well-designed form, is considerably less than the apartment-design discourse currently recommends.
What I have lived in
I will say a word about what I have lived in, because the theory is shaped by the experience and the experience is part of the case. The apartment in Brooklyn Heights is small — under six hundred square feet — with one bedroom, a small living room with a corner that holds the desk, a kitchen along one wall, and a bathroom that is adequate. The apartment has been my principal home for ten years. I have entertained groups of six for dinner in it on a regular basis. I have produced most of my professional work in it. I have read most of the books I have read in the past decade in it. The apartment is enough.
The apartment in Lisbon is somewhat larger — closer to nine hundred square feet — with the additional space concentrated in a small second bedroom that I keep as a study and a small terrace that is among the better features of the apartment. The Lisbon arrangement is more spacious than the Brooklyn one but is not more pleasant. The two apartments produce, in the use of them, comparable amounts of satisfaction, with the differences being matters of light and neighborhood and view rather than of square footage.
The friends I know who have moved to larger apartments in the past several years have not, in my observation, become happier in the apartments than they were in the smaller ones they occupied previously. The friends who have moved to smaller apartments have, in general, reported that the move was easier than they expected and that they did not miss the additional space the older apartment provided.
The case I am actually making
The case I am making is not minimalist in the recent meaning of the term. I am not recommending that anyone live with very few possessions in an aesthetic of austere emptiness. The apartments I am describing are full — full of books, full of objects accumulated over years, full of the small daily inventory of an adult life. The case is about the size of the room rather than about what goes in the room.
The case is also not, properly speaking, an environmental case, although the case is consistent with environmental considerations. The case is about what the additional space does to the occupant and what it takes from the occupant in terms of cost, attention, and time. The case is about a question that has been more or less excluded from the apartment-design discourse of the past several decades and that I would like to put back on the table.
The right size of apartment, for an adult or a couple, is smaller than the prevailing discourse suggests. The savings from getting the size right are not principally financial, though there are financial savings. The savings are in attention, in time, in the small daily costs of moving through and maintaining the space. The savings compound over the years, and the smaller apartment that has been chosen for the actual life of the occupant is the apartment that does the work of being lived in better than the larger apartment that has been chosen for an imagined life.
