Arcade's Micro-Lofts Featured In NYC Museum Exhibit

The Museum of the City of New York is featuring Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers, organized in conjunction with Citizens Housing & Planning Council (CHPC). The exhibition, which runds through September 2013, offers insights into how New York City's changing social, economic, and cultural lives, especially the rise of single adults, are re-shaping urban households, and how design can help re-shape the city's housing stock for New Yorkers at all phases of their lives.

The exhibition will present an array of innovative architectural solutions that could better accommodate the city's emerging housing needs. Making Room will feature a full-scale, "micro-apartment," fully furnished with transformable furniture, along with other proposals to provide new housing options for a 21st century population - including shared housing for single adults and modified homes for extended families - as well as a look at real-life examples pioneered in other cities around the world as they face growing populations and changing family structures and new environmental realities.

The "micro-apartment" featured in the exhibit is currently the model for the new lofts in Providence's historic Arcade.

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About The Arcade

Retail: Built in 1828 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, the Arcade is the oldest indoor shopping mall in the nation. The new project stays true to the Arcade's history as a retail center, but provides 14 new shops and restaurants with a fresh, new look.

Rather than the once familiar counter style establishments filling the hall, the Arcade's center atrium is lined with more retail shops than restaurants, and the three dine in restaurants include one with outdoor cafe seating. The restaurants have outside access with private entrances so they can remain open after the Arcade's retail floor closes at 9pm.

The Arcade's retail stores were renovated to include windows on the outside of their stores and bay windows in the center hall, allowing business owners to promote their products. Some stores feature stairs to the basement level, providing two levels of retail space for their patrons.

Residential: The second and third levels of the Arcade is home to 48 micro lofts. Those who work and create in cities, enjoy an urban lifestyle, and hope to live in the city's center, are attracted to the small, environmentally friendly spaces that come at an affordable price.

As downtown residents, those living in micro-lofts enjoy access to arts and culture, theater, shops and restaurants, movie houses and public transportation via train or bus, all within a short walk.