One day robots may rule the world, but for now they are taking over New York City apartments to ease the ramps of life in confined spaces.
At least three Big Apple buildings have installed or offer the option to include robotic systems that, with the use of a touchpad, smartphone or a resident’s voice, can reveal and hide beds, cabinets and desks.
Not only are they useful for providing creative storage, but they also offer the illusion of living in a larger apartment.
A city development that includes these mechanisms is The Smile rental designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group at 158 E. 126th St. in East Harlem, with 163 market-type units. There, five units, four studios and a bedroom, will be equipped with Bumblebee systems, a San Francisco-based company whose modular furniture helps create more space.
One of the houses is a 470-square-foot studio Bumblebee system, already installed and anchored to the ceiling, can go up and down a bed, as well as store closets, by phone and by voice.
A console and a coffee table, which are kept on the floor in the open seating area, which also serve as a respective long bedside table and a foot stand with storage when the bed goes downstairs, turning the living room into a bedroom.
“Bumblebee’s vision has always been to create a highly efficient space for it to become affordable,” said Sankarshan Murthy, CEO and co-founder of the company. “Don’t pay for two or three rooms you don’t use all the time, but get the rooms whenever you want.”
You don’t need as much furniture either, as the system is integrated, but still, efficiency comes at a price. This unit asks for $ 2,663 a month in net effective income, which is a figure that takes into account concessions, in this case four months free on a 16-month lease. (Priced at $ 3,550.)
Without Bumblebee, a 495-square-foot studio is asking for $ 2,171 in net cash rent. (Listed at $ 2,895). This makes the robbery studio slightly cheaper than a 623-square-foot Bumblebee-free bedroom, which demands a net effective expense of $ 2,764 a month (at $ 3,225).
Designed by former Apple and Tesla engineers, the Bumblebee system uses software that catalogs stored items, such as an umbrella for rainy days, that can be summoned upon request. It also relies on cubic space for layout, specifically maximizing roof use, rather than square footage.
“It shouldn’t look like you live in a closet with Murphy beds,” Murthy said. “I want to live in a futuristic place, that feels like the house of Ironman, in which it changes [what you] he asked. “
In Long Island City, the 801-unit Skyline Tower condominium, priced from $ 680,000 for a studio, offers buyers of all apartments the option to install the Golden Cloud Bed and Pocket Closet system. an independent company that also focuses on space saving. transformable furniture. (Prices depend on system size and customizations.)
The cloudy bed, in the same way, goes up and down from the ceiling, revealing a sofa in the sitting area in an elevated position. Modern Spaces, which manages sales and marketing, equipped a model studio unit with this feature, as well as a pocket wardrobe that reveals a dressing room with retractable hangers behind a floor-sliding TV console.
Ori works primarily from a touch keyboard, says its founder and CEO Hasier Larrea, as well as by phone and voice. Another of its systems is already installed in 10 units (studios and one bedroom) in The Artisan at Essex Crossing, a development of 263 units at 108 Broome St., Manhattan, where there are 142 apartments at market price . (Rents from about $ 3,000 for a studio.)
It separates the space … and then adds a lot of storage, which is another big problem that studio residents complain about.
The CEO of Ori, Hasier Larrea
There, this hidden system has storage, a drop-down desk, and some have beds that slide from the bottom.
“Separate the space,” Larrea said of the added benefit of having this Ori installation as a partition as well.
“When you live in these smaller apartments, especially when you live with your partner, you want to have a kind of separation of your space and then add a lot of storage, which is another big problem that people complain about. students “.
There is already talk of about six of these apartments and Larrea adds that the rest has become popular among potential tenants.
“We’re starting to get a lot more requests through ads on social media,” he said.
At The Artisan, the average rental premium for a studio with Ori is $ 200, which means a lot more per month than a standard studio. Meanwhile, the average rent for a room is $ 800 higher than the Ori unit, which gives a tenant a house that mimics a room for much less rent.
“The aim is to offer you an apartment as affordable as we can [and] as livable as we can be, said David Dishy, president of L + M Development Partners, part of the joint venture that developed The Artisan. “The Ori allows us, in theory, to give you a greater sense of space, which translates into a lower rent for you.”