Quite Thought Full: Tight spaces for rent

Imagine living in San Francisco, in your own sweet studio apartment with a great view of the city. You're living it up, enjoying the West Coast lifestyle, and Katy Perry's "California Girls" is your new theme song. There's only one tiny problem with your new pad.

Your apartment is the smallest it can be, according to California law, measuring only 160 square feet.

For the more than 42 percent of San Francisco residents who live alone, this apartment sounds like a money-saving dream. Here on the East Coast, it sounds more like a claustrophobic nightmare, particularly to those of us who complain about being stuck in small dorm rooms.

Patrick Kennedy, a Bay Area housing developer, is in pursuit of creating a functional and hip living space in the smallest legal apartment in San Fran. The task comes with many space-saving techniques, including furniture that serves more than one function and an appliance "closet."

In a video featured on faircompanies.com, a website that provides information on and tools for simple living and sustainability, Kennedy gave a tour of this micro-sized apartment. During a walk-through (which did not take too long), of the apartment with two cameramen, Kennedy showed different space-saving features of the apartment.

These features included a window seat with a rising platform which turned into a kitchen table and two chairs,  with ottomans,  and also served as a guest bed. The couch is also a foldable queen size bed. There are also many in-wall storage spaces and a sound-proof privacy door that separates the apartments. A few elements of the apartment that Kennedy boasted about were the nine-foot ceilings and the eight-and-a-half-foot slab of bamboo that served as the door.

Not too shabby when you include a good view of the Golden Gate City.

Kennedy admitted in the video that this apartment served only as a prototype for what could be done. For version 2.0, Kennedy is determined to better serve the city resident who doesn't expect to have big dinner parties in their apartments. Needed adjustments, he mentioned, were installing an actual shower in the bathroom as well as a bigger kitchen sink needed for washing pots and pans.

As nice as it would be to live in your own broom closet out in California, an apartment of this size poses many problems for those of us who like our space. The kitchen is also the living room, with no conventional oven and no dishwasher. Pulling out your bed every night might not pose problems, but having to make it, fold it, and push it away on those rough mornings might become quite a bother. And if you are having more than one guest over, you will quickly run out of table space for dinner.

If your dream is to live like Harry Potter underneath a staircase, then Patrick Kennedy has some real estate for you out in the City by the Bay. Don't forget to wear flowers in your hair on move-in day.

Katie Walsh is a junior English and philosophy major and can be reached at walshk2@duq.edu.