‘This is the Volkswagen Beetle of one-bedroom flats,” declares Marc Vlessing, the Dutch-born chair of the UK developer Pocket Living, as he gives a tour of the firm’s latest apartment block, opposite the William Morris gallery in Walthamstow, east London.
Like the Beetle, the flats are designed to be compact but practical, with higher ceilings, wider doors, floor-to-ceiling windows and less corridor space than usual. The building has lightwells, communal garden roof terraces and cycle parking. Vlessing recalls that his mother said, when she first saw a Pocket site: “I don’t know what’s so special – in Holland we have this all the time.”
