Making Room: Housing for a Changing America, a new exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., is championing the concept of housing design built around demographics.
NBM curator Chrysanthe Broikos says, “When people think about the household, they conjure up this image of two parents, the kids, and a dog. But that household type is only 20 percent of all households in the nation.” Fast Company reports that the most common housing style in the country is the three-bedroom house, at a 39.82 percent share. Single people living alone account for 28 percent of our population, but only .87 percent of housing inventory are studio apartments, and 11.36 percent are one-bedroom homes.
Making Room originated with the Citizen’s Housing and Planning Council, a New York City-based housing research nonprofit. CHPC convened a group of international architects, designers, and planners in 2009 to discuss how housing design can and should evolve to meet the needs of growing cities, and the booming number of single people within them.