One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill. — Center for Building in North America
Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying of an issue affecting both developers and architects in pertaining markets and compliments an earlier 2021 report on post-pandemic trends in multifamily residential design from the website Propmodo.
Smith writes: "The merits of North American building and zoning codes can be debated, but the effect is clearly that apartments, in order to provide the same number of bedrooms and give everyone a window, must necessarily consume far more floor area than point access block designs possible in other countries. So if you’re looking for a family-sized apartment in the U.S. or Canada and finding that new buildings don’t have what you’re looking for, it’s not you, it’s not the architect, and it’s not even the developer — it’s the codes."
2 Comments
If we take a very small step back, the picture starts to get much clearer on this issue. What is the predominant construction type for multifamily housing in europe? Concrete would be the correct answer. Therefore all codes developed for european construction compliance are based on concrete construction as the predominant form of construction...which means fire rating is endemic, not applied. Now let's take the same mental exercise for the US. What is the predominant construction type for multifamily housing in the US? wood would be the correct answer! and what is different between wood and concrete? take a match to each and you'll figure it out pretty quickly.
So, why is so much of american building codes revolving about fire and life safety concerns? Because we build tinderboxes. THAT SIMPLE. So, how do we change our concerns? Maybe we need to ask what our goals actually are...because mostly its about the benjamins. After all Cash Rules Everything Around Me.
I appreciate our building codes requiring light, ventilation, accessibility and green building standards, as much as, of course MEP and structural. It improves the quality of life and safety of residents and staff. I don’t see the building codes as the culprit, although many parts within it should be adjusted here and there to make construction more affordable and more flexible, but to lower these standards developed over generations of building code cycles without affecting their in,tent and purpose is questionable in my opinion, and is not at the heart of the matter.
I served as design commissioner for seven years in my local city and reviewed probably thousands of units of housing proposed for the city. I remember observing how developers were proposing mostly 1 and 2 bedroom unit apartments throughout the city. I remember my concern that our city will not have space for larger families and was seeing how it was being engineered to be this way. I see a big reason for a lack of larger apartments, not the building code, but the developers looking for a better profit with smaller apartments and having no limitation on the number of these they could provide. There should be some incentive jurisdictions could create to increase the number of these units. A city without large families gets old and is unsustainable. We need to provide opportunities, incentives and even some level of requirement for apartment buildings, that meet certain criteria, to provide a percentage of family sized units. We already do this in some jurisdictions with a requirement for affordable units or to pay an in lieu fee that goes to a fund for affordable housing. The same the same can happen for large family units.
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