Mayor Eric Adams opened a new window into his vision for building New York City out of the current housing crisis, with a riff on “dormitory” style accommodations [...]
During a conversation on Monday at the Greene Space, New York Public Radio's live events venue, Adams said he wants to 'do a real examination' of the laws that require windows in bedrooms — a major tweak that could make it easier for developers to convert empty offices into apartments.
— Gothamist
The Mayor’s comments in favor of window features found in Dormzilla-like residential design caught the ire of critics, who were quick to illustrate its potential fire hazards and physiological impacts. Adams’ suggestion seems a bit at odds with the city’s push to deliver better affordable housing with 40,000 office conversions and other measures, but are nevertheless in line with several of the recommendations for “flexible regulations“ attributed to the Adaptive Reuse Task Force proposed in December 2022.
According to Gothamist, Adams then also commended WeWork’s flawed housing development model and the widespread adaptation of single-room occupancy (or SROs) constructions that typically have windows but have been dwindling since being made illegal under New York City law in 1955.
Supportive housing advocate and pioneer Roseanne Haggerty told Gothamist they would “totally endorse a re-examination of the shared living model, so long as the new, small apartments were safe and well maintained." The city is still awaiting data from its census from its recent street homeless count, though the figure was reported to have reached record numbers in December 2022.
9 Comments
Sorry to nag, Archinect, but it's (some of) what I do.
Do you mean to headline "windowless apartment units" when the article is about windowless bedrooms? The first is heinous and the second is slightly less heinous.
Also, both images illustrating this piece show buildings with lots of windows. Maybe find a more relevant interior shot sans windows?
On the upside, this topic is vital, and likely to be with us for a while-- as the square pegs of empty office buildings try to get jammed into the round holes of housing demand. Thank you for posting the link.
Adams was just extolling the luxury housing conversion of offices at Wall Street and Broadway, all units with bountiful windows. Pretty certain none of the supertall super-rich tax-subsidized housing piles will have windowless bedrooms. Maybe he is thinking of police prison cells. In any case this is just more developer-favoring policy that assures injury and danger to cities' inhabitants. He is a landlord himself in case that is overlooked.
On the plus side, some mid-century offices that are unattractive office-to-residential conversion projects at the moment could be financially viable if there's a market for windowless bedrooms (and relaxing other codes ... as risky as that is). The Wall St conversions were luxury success stories that might help alleviate housing pressures down the line - but they are priced out of most renters' ranges for the most part.
So, architects, what's a viable alternative?
Rather than locating bedrooms far away from exterior walls (and windows/glazing) on the deep floor plates of office buildings, what else could happen? Conventional unit plans around the curtainwall perimeter would result in (i) windowed bedrooms, but (ii) fewer units, as well as (iii) a deep-ish, windowless zone between the building core and peripheral apartments. Could this zone be programmed to make sense in some other way? And if so, could that zone/use be punctuated to provide unit entries without killing the idea?
Overall you are ending up with less rentable area, but if we are just talking concepts, I think you locate the tenant amenities around the core to push the apartments more to the exterior of the floor plate. Anything that doesn't require daylight. Gym. Demo Kitchen. Hydroponic Garden. Movie Theater, Bike Room, Coworking, etc...
On the regulatory side, I would be OK with saying that 1 of 2 or 1 of 3 bedrooms in an adaptive re-use can use borrowed daylight (like a transom) from a living space. Especially in a sprinklered building.
This would let you do a pretty traditional residential flat plan with daylight for one or two bedrooms and daylight for common area. Kitchen and bath towards core/ entry and in between perhaps you can sandwich another bedroom with borrowed light.
I also wonder if that 'inner ring' program could be something else entirely, unassociated with the apartments. Storage units, small work spaces, etc, accessible by other types of tenants.
Maybe in a school project, but that just feels like a non-starter for security purposes. Maybe you can make it like a data center that doesn't require much human access and use the waste heat to heat the building.
I remember seeing quite a few new condos/apartments in NYC that feature a sleeping alcove with no daylight access - sometimes located right next to the entrance/corridor. That seemed OK as far as regulation goes. If a narrow shoebox or squiggly zig zag are the only viable layouts for mid century offices with deep floor plates, then maybe only having one window per apartment might not be a bad thing - assuming everything else that goes into a successful real estate project still aligns, from mortgage covenants to reworking MEP. And achieving a price point that makes financial sense.
Maybe just limit unit types to studios and singles, even huge ones.
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