This article was taken from the March 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Graham Hill's big idea is to live small. "We can live -- happier, healthier and more sustainable lives with less stuff and less space," says the 41-year-old Canadian founder of LifeEdited, a company that promotes pared-down living and plans to sell small but neatly designed micro-apartments to enable this "edited" lifestyle.
The company is in discussions to build four 37m square test units in Las Vegas, with a view to building a larger complex. It's also hoping to build a 12-unit block in San Francisco, and has submitted plans for a 70-unit building in New York City, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's adAPT NYC competition, which earlier this year sought proposals for rental buildings composed mainly of 27m square micro-units.
A trained architect and product designer, Hill is no stranger to building a profitable business from idealism. His website TreeHugger, which attempts to bring sustainable design and living into the mainstream, was sold to the Discovery Channel for $10 million (£6.2 million) in 2007. "When I started TreeHugger, I was travelling all over the world and pretty much living out of a suitcase," he explains. "I realised that we really don't need much stuff." Life is simpler, and better, with fewer possessions, he believes.
So in 2009, Hill bought two tiny apartments in Greenwich Village, New York, and launched a competition challenging designers to make the most of a 39m square space. The brief was tough: the apartment would be for two people, but would have to hold 12 for sit-down dinner, have two guest beds, a lounge, an office, a bathroom and a kitchen. Selected from 300 entries, the winning design -- now the first fully functional LifeEdited apartment --features foldout beds, expandable furniture and movable walls that convert one room into six. It offers the functionality of a space triple the size, says Hill, even if the "rooms" can only be used one at a time.
Hill will move in permanently in early 2013, but for now the apartment is hosting potential clients and partners, including hoteliers and property developers. "The next step is to create entire apartment blocks composed of these smartly designed small spaces, with sharing systems built around a product library of all the things that don't make sense to own individually," as well as bookable spare rooms. He also plans to develop smart, space-saving products. "We have more space than ever but we still have so much stuff that [in the US] we have a $22 billion personal storage industry," explains Hill. "That level of consumerism brings personal debt and a massive environmental footprint. But I believe we can apply smart design and encourage behaviour change to build smaller, simpler lives that allow us to live within our means, financially and environmentally."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
