On the elevator's role in our skyrocketing housing calculus

2024-07-10T11:22:00-04:00

Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...] It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.

Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry.

He says: "Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed. Special interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient, overregulated system. Accessibility rules miss the forest for the trees," adding, "The United States and Canada have also marooned themselves on a regulatory island for elevator parts and designs."

Last year, New York City became the most expensive construction market in the world, with an average cost of $506 per square foot, according to an analysis from Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

SOM's all-inclusive Kansas City terminal brings air transport design 'far into the future'

2023-02-28T17:04:00-05:00

This week, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is debuting a new civic landmark for the Kansas City area they claim will also set a new benchmark for inclusive design in transportation architecture while bringing its 51-year-old airport “far into the future.”

The new, 39-gate terminal comes with an adjacent 6,000-space parking garage designed by BNIM and importantly consolidates three smaller terminals into a single two-story structure. With room to expand by another 11 gates in the coming years, its layout keys on user circulation and comes with a series of design features in line with the city’s resolution to make it the “most accessible in the world.”

Under a hemlock-clad ceiling overhang, both levels of the light-filled, 1.1 million-square-foot I-shaped structure come with a series of locally-designed mosaics made from materials preserved from its predecessor building in order to preserve its memory. The products of an intensive commun...

Archinect - News

On the elevator's role in our skyrocketing housing calculus

SOM's all-inclusive Kansas City terminal brings air transport design 'far into the future'