America is a big place with tens of thousands of cities. There just aren't enough architects to make everything unique. Expecting her to be as architecturally diverse as Europe is asking too much.
Ultimately what the author is asking for isn't architectural diversity but longer lasting buildings:
"It is hard to imagine that fifty years onward folks would get excited about the one-plus-five buildings or contemplate an adaptive re-use. Too flimsy to last even that long, these buildings will probably have to be demolished once they become obsolete, unable to stand as the testimony of our times."
He talks about strong or weak "bones" and contends that this sort of stick-built construction doesn't have good strong "bones."
Eh, with any maintenance those buildings will last at least 50 years.
In the US the bigger issue is, in 50 years will it make any sense for the building owner to pay to maintain the building? Putting up a long lasting building in certain places in Detroit 50 years ago may have made sense... but now it could be in a completely worthless ghetto, everybody has moved from the area.
Or, as the saying goes "In the US, 100 years is a long time"
It is good for the city! Those long lasting buildings are where affordable housing is found, it is where artists studios thrive, where community spaces are built.
Cities need buildings that are durable, long lasting, and that have depreciated in value!
"He talks about strong or weak "bones" and contends that this sort of stick-built construction doesn't have good strong "bones.""
I used to have this bias and, to some degree still do - at least aesthetically.
However, after building two homes I have come to really appreciate the strength and earthquake resiliency of stud walls clad with plywood sheathing. This kind of shear-wall structure is very strong and quite inexpensive.
A "good building" made of brick or stone - like you see in Europe and the East Coast (and that I find very aesthetically pleasing) are very, very fragile to earth shaking.
I don't think the "bones" are the problem - the problem is the dressing. Double thick insulation in the walls, noise isolated (or simply double-thick) sheetrock and a 1/4 layer of rubber between the subfloor and the flooring surface (and perhaps some other ingredients) are all you need to make a studwall/stickbuilt structure very, very "solid" and noise isolated, etc.
He's also asking for architectural diversity, though. He spends a long paragraph complaining that the buildings are "trite," "predictable," "without true historic reference," and all the other stuff that I associate with smug architects who design pretty, unusable public buildings.
His other arguments make sense to an extent, but frankly I tend not to trust any architectural commentary from people who judge a building by its cover, and I think the criticisms in these comments bear that out.
I don't think this is the issue. As the article talks about, architecture is shaped by regulation. Of course, you can usually construct exotic buildings if you have the money and the will to do so, but building codes explicitly approving a specific design will create a monoculture.
That's not to say this is necessarily bad. It allows for safety and environmental standards in buildings people are able to afford because of minimal marginal compliance cost.
Close but no. They add a five story wood structure on top of one story of something more solid like concrete. This cost effectively increases space without massively increasing costs over a five story wooden structure.
I think we both read the same thing, and decided that opposite parts of it were the key point,
"The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC."
The issue is you can have retail in a wooden building. Which seems like the point of this construction over a 5 story wooden building with retail on the ground floor. 3A limits building heights, but by changing the ground door you are allowed to build a taller structure.
PS: I agree that Retail is a common use for the ground floor of these buildings. But it’s not the only use for the ground floor.
Until a few years ago, it was fairly uncommon for an architect to go beyond four stories with wood-frame construction. Today, many designers choose five stories of wood over concrete podiums as a way to cost-effectively increase the density of projects. (Architectural Record March 2014)
When they work well, neighborhoods are revitalized with local businesses and people become active in their local community, kids play outside, and friends have places to mingle locally.
When they fail, it is a barrage of "for lease" signs on bottom floor windows as the retail spaces sit empty.
I think the one plus five buildings create a higher density of retail space than the residential population can support. Even in lively sections of popular Seattle neighborhoods with 90%+ residential occupancy you will see empty retail space in one-plus-fives.
Even Seattle can only support a finite number of coffee shops and the boutiques have to compete with supermarkets, department stores, and online retailers.
You'd think so, but when I visit other countries I see amounts of retail that dwarf anything in the states.
The Suzhou metro region in China has ~3x the population of the Seattle metro, but way, way, more than 3x the retail.
Kyoto is the same way, comparable to the Seattle Metro, way more retail.
It may also be that America tends towards larger retail outlets, we have a lack of high quality smaller restaurants, and the % of boutiques to larger stores (Macy's, etc) here seems different than in other countries.
For that matter, it was interesting to me that many of the large department stores in Japan are made up of what we'd think of as smaller boutique retailers who just so happen to be located right next to each other. It is a very different way to shop, in an American department store, the store runs everything and may have different brands broken out into sections. In a fair number of Japanese department stores, each brand seemed to be an independent retailer!
(This was super cool for variety and price points.)
I noticed something similar in China as well, not quite in the same way, and large name brand owned stores seemed much more popular there, but there were plenty of malls that consisted of tiny local stores all lined up next to each other.
I've also noticed that the minimum sqft for the newer mixed use buildings seems to be rather large. Compare the newer buildings to what you find in lower Queen Ann, where there are more tiny stores sitting around, same thing around Fremont.
On a related note, I'd love to see more restaurants that fit only 5 or 6 people in them, with just a chef running the whole show. Is it less efficient? Maybe, but the food is better.
If you want something in that vein, Max's World Cafe in DT Issaquah is tiny, and the chef, Edna, is incredible and friendly. I could do with 10x restaurants of that size! Modern construction just isn't setup to pop out a bunch of 150 sqft restaurants in a block though.
My experience traveling to Suzhou and Kyoto confirm what you are saying.
I wonder what all the factors are that contribute to the increase in small businesses. I would like to see an increase in these types of retail businesses and restaurants. Kyoto, and to a lesser proportional degree Suzhou, have much more tourism than Seattle has. Both cities experience more foot traffic. Both cities are much older. I wonder if there are any differences on the retail market, business capital market, or legal regulations that encourage empty retail spots to be quickly filled in Kyoto and Suzhou. I wonder if Asian retailers feel strong competition from online orders. The Seattle housing market, either with market forces or legal regulation, have more complete kitchens than the Kyoto/Suzhou housing market. I wonder what effect this has on the restaurant market.
> On a related note, I'd love to see more restaurants that fit only 5 or 6 people in them, with just a chef running the whole show. Is it less efficient? Maybe, but the food is better.
Food trucks are a very close approximate to this type of restaurant.
> Food trucks are a very close approximate to this type of restaurant.
The quality is a world of difference though.
Those tiny restaurants in other countries have real chefs with full, if small, kitchens, cooking sit down meals.
Best bowl of ramen I had in Japan was a single chef establishment, he was in a U-shaped open kitchen and guests sat around him.
> I wonder if there are any differences on the retail market, business capital market, or legal regulations that encourage empty retail spots to be quickly filled in Kyoto and Suzhou.
I think the very existence of small retail spots helps!
> and to a lesser proportional degree Suzhou, have much more tourism than Seattle has.
FWIW, if anyone reading this is wondering where to go next, I'd recommend Suzhou! (or visit Seattle in late spring, Suzhou in early autumn!)
Every year at PAX West I am saddened by the lack of good food around DT Seattle for people to eat. Granted downtown is largely a business district, but I bet Subway gets the majority of PAX West food sales!
I think they would fail less frequently if they were willing to subdivide the ground-level spaces a bit more. I notice a lot of the ground floors are built with a very small number of entrances, so they cannot easily be divided up for small-scale tenants.
From the builder's perspective, I'm sure it must be cheaper to build a smaller number of larger units, and from a landlord's perspective, it is probably better to have a smaller number of larger tenants; but from the neighborhood's perspective, it would be nice if there were more little hole-in-the-wall spaces for niche businesses.
Technical answer from the article: "What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC."
Oh apparently there's some crazy dropdown that displays the article _over_ another article about German trains? I didn't even see the dropdown at first.
‘What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC.’
As a related not, at least in NYC the six-story building is very common, and this is apparently because a seven-story building will typically require a water tower to regulate water pressure.
It’s also the cutoff for what most people will tolerate in a walk up, and the sixth floor is already pretty discounted, so if you add more floors you’re probably looking at an elevator to boot.
Wow, I couldnt imagine more than 3 stories without an elevator. Just think of groceries, wet shoes, heading outside then realizing you forgot your sunglasses, etc.
This article seems to be putting on some strong rose-colored glasses. It appeals to the idea that people in the past all lived in beautiful, long-lasting buildings. The reality is that the long-lasting buildings are the only ones that still exist. The bulk of humanity has always lived in cheap construction. Affordable housing is not a bad thing, especially with modern fire codes.
The last paragraph starts with "For centuries the quality of their buildings and a certain permanence set cities apart". That's a really good joke. The author even points to this earlier with "The sameness [of 1+5s] isn't like East Berlin's "Plattenbauten" (precast concrete buildings) around Alexanderplatz, nor has it the uniformity of some of Baltimore's rowhouse neighborhoods." I'm legitimately not sure whether those cheaply constructed neighborhoods are supposed to be positive examples or not.
This article seems to be putting on some strong rose-colored glasses. It appeals to the idea that people in the past all lived in beautiful, long-lasting buildings. The reality is that the long-lasting buildings are the only ones that still exist.
Well sure, but at least some houses used to be beautiful and long-lasting; nowadays, even large, expensive mansions are typically built in a cheap, slapdash manner, using techniques and materials that are not nearly as long-lasting or durable as the ones that would've been used to build a nice house a century ago.
For a really obvious example, just look at roofing materials; a good slate roof can last over a century with minimal maintenance, but nobody builds houses with slate roofs anymore. Instead, even high-end homes use asphalt shingles that last 20-30 years tops.
Driving through Eastern europe and in the Alps I noticed that they are very popular -- was wondering if it was a cost thing or if they are simply better in colder/harsher climates -- my guess is both.
Steel roofs are particularly well-suited to areas that receive heavy snowfall. The snow tends to slide right off, instead of dangerously accumulating on an asphalt roof.
Have steel roof, can confirm. It makes a satisfying sliding then silence then thump noise.
It makes shoveling a path adjacent to the house kind of a pain because you have to shovel it after snow falls and then again after the snow falls from the roof. Shoveling snow is also a lot more interesting when you have to listen for the sliding sound and GTFO or hug the house if you hear it.
Or a popping, followed by an entire-house-shaking moment of terror. This one wasn't actually that bad from a shaking standpoint, but still caught me off guard.
>So one hard or soft slate for each square foot of your house times $1,500 will be total cost of a new slate roof. Asphalt shingles have a total cost around $200 per square.
Well, yea slate roofs cost 7X as much. No wonder people don't.
Well yeah, nowadays contractors can charge through the nose when hardly anyone even has the necessary skills to maintain existing slate roofs anymore, much less install new ones. It didn't always used to be like that, though. The material cost is more, of course, but not nearly 7X more.
That's an overload of the term luxury. Is air conditioning a luxury? Depends on what you mean by it.
What I mean by it in this case is, we are able to support economically many more people having mansions than we used to. The trade-off is they rightfully earn the prefix of Mc.
is this actually true though? Most older long-lasting buildings seem to either be build for industrial/economic use or are goverment/public project kind of works.
Also, most normal housing was of dubious quality all throughout history, there is a reason many european cities decided to level vast parts of their working class housing districts after ww2. Mainly because it was far easier to start over (thanks to ww2 damage) and because most of these housing where simply to cheap to be worth restoring.
Yes, absolutely. I live in a city with a ton of old freestanding houses that were built around 1900, and they're incredibly sturdy. You can see this all throughout the construction:
The frames are built from really thick wooden beams that can take a beating. I had a large tree fall on my house earlier this year, and the trunk bounced/slid off, doing only superficial damage to the roof and siding; I talked to multiple contractors and insurance people who said a newer house built using modern construction standards would've been flattened, or at least suffered serious structural damage.
Things like windows are built to last too. The original wooden sash cord designs are still functioning 100+ years after they were built, with the exception of a couple windows that needed the cords replaced, but that's relatively cheap and easy. I expect the same windows will continue to work another 100 years as long as they're cared for and maintained.
This isn't about "the democratization of luxury", as another commenter suggested. Cheap construction costs more in the long term. This is about a cultural shift toward favoring short-term over long-term thinking. Long-lasting wood sash cord windows would not be expensive to build in this day and age, and they could be quite energy efficient too with modern glass and weather stripping, but people don't think or care about the long term the way they used to, and so they'd would rather settle for cheap, shiny vinyl windows that yellow and crack and fall apart in a matter of decades.
Slight rant, but those types of windows were one of the first things that bugged me when I moved over from Europe. IMO, not only are they not as practical, but they also leak more energy than what we had in Germany. You can't poke your head out all the way and need to bend over awkwardly to get some fresh air. It would be one thing if it was only on older houses, but new ones use them as well. By contrast, even my grandparent's house, built in the 50s, had windows that swung open like a door or leaned inwards at ~10°, if you only wanted a little bit of a breeze. They even had windows built into the roof that could be opened either in the middle or from the top, thanks to dual hinges. Best part, the "Rolladen", aka roll-up blinds built into the walls that helped with heat-retention in the winter, provided sound-dampening, and could be automated by a timer. Maybe it's just the area where I live, but I get the feeling that for many architectural features in the states we decided about 100 years that everything is good enough as it is and the only continued innovation was geared towards cutting corners and getting cheaper materials to work.
/rant 0
https://goo.gl/images/QS5oJjhttps://goo.gl/images/1nRYHthttps://goo.gl/images/kDVPkvhttps://goo.gl/images/TfDtoK
You need to provide evidence for your claim that they leak energy, first of all. You also don't seem to understand how sash windows work. They are meant to be opened from the top and bottom at the same time, which creates a continuous flow of air from the outside. They can also accommodate window A/C units. Your German windows can do neither.
> Long-lasting wood sash cord windows would not be expensive to build in this day and age
They'd be relatively expensive because they require more labor to install, and these days labor is the biggest cost. Older homes had better craftsmanship because labor was much cheaper back then, even highly skilled labor.
Engineered, cookie-cutter building materials are a substitute for labor. They're also a substitute for the fact that high-quality, old-growth lumber is gone, so if you want dimensional stability and moisture resistance you have to rely on engineered solutions.
I have 90-year-old sash windows in my house. I think they're great aesthetically and mechanically but previous owners didn't properly maintain them (because labor is expensive!) so they're nearing their useful life. Equivalent replacements will be quiet expensive, not to mention the labor to make sure they're installed properly, modern or not.
Tile is also a long-lasting option that's cheaper than slate. The issues are not purely material costs though but supply, specialized labour, environmental factors, etc.
Agreed, there's a bit of survivorship bias. For an idea of poor construction in the 19th century, look at some of the streets pre-Hausmann's renovation of Paris:
> The Bievre river was used to dump the waste from the tanneries of Paris; it emptied into the Seine.
Even before reading the caption, that picture -- absent any obvious tourist landmarks -- immediately made me think of the same location rendered in one of the Assassin's Creed games... I can't tell whether that's funny, sad, or bizarrely positive. Maybe all three.
A common type of residential structure where I live is the three-decker. They were built of the cheapest construction of their time, and yes, they are quite flammable. Given the comparatively-lax regulations that existed when three-deckers were built, they have achieved residential density that is hard to beat with new buildings.
Three floors is popular in (western) Europe too for apartments because it's the highest where an elevator is not mandatory (but they're usually not made out of wood here... except if e.g. it's a chalet in the mountains)
I know that you're probably talking a lot older than one century, but as a minor counterpoint:
Our house (in Buffalo, NY area) turned 100 this year, and there are thousands of houses just like it in the Buffalo area. In fact, most of the housing that was built in the late 1800s and early 1900s is still standing:
> In fact, most of the housing that was built in the late 1800s and early 1900s is still standing.
I don't think that the linked article actually says that.
What it does say is that Buffalo has the oldest housing stock in the country with a median construction year of 1954. I would guess that to be mostly an artifact of the declining population of the area, which peaked between 1960 and 1970.
Yeah, I kind of conflated my anecdote with the reference in support of my anecdote. I'll have to see if I can dig up more data on this.
As for population, you have to be careful with the statistics on this because, while the area did lose population since the 70s, there was also a lot of flight from the city to the suburbs over the same time period. So, it is often more instructive to look at the total population of western NY instead of just the city of Buffalo.
the issue with old housing in the end is simply heat isolation. Old houses leak away alot of heat (especially if deep cracks are present in the brick and mortar, which is very expensive to fix). Which in term will mean you pay a significant amount of extra cash to keep the heat on. Renovation is possible ofcourse, but not always worth it?
Many of the older homes here are wood (typically, balloon frame) with a sandstone foundation, so you can reduce the amount of heat loss by making sure that the sandstone mortar is in good shape, making sure that all windows and entrances are properly-sealed, and strategic use of insulation. I say "strategic" here because you have to be careful about making the house too tight, which can cause moisture to get trapped and result in very bad things like sill rot.
The key is that these old homes have very good "bones", so even a gut job can use the original structure intact. Combine that with the fact that Buffalo's real estate is relatively inexpensive still (it's starting to get up there, though), and extensive renovations aren't too bad on the wallet.
I think the author's annoyance stems from the fact that these buildings attempt to look stylish and high class, but are made cheaply. It's kind of upper-class annoyance that lower-class people are getting something that looks nice.
Ultimately, like certificates of authenticity on diamonds, the upper class will settle on some easily identified but hard to fake styles for expensive homes, and the cycle will repeat.
> The bulk of humanity has always lived in cheap construction
Yes, but when older homes were built labor (even highly skilled labor) was comparatively much cheaper and lumber came from old-growth trees.
Most homes built today (cheap or not) will literally begin to fall apart in months if they're not kept temperature and humidity controlled.
To build a house today using a mix of modern technology (electrical, plumbing, foundation, etc) with the quality of wood and finishing used in older homes would be very expensive compared to typical construction, even in high-end developments.
All of the spectacular construction fires in Oakland in the past few years have been this type of construction. The enormous open wood frame structures were like carefully constructed bonfires built of dry wood. Lots of surface area and ventilation to feed the fire once it got started.
I haven't lived in Oakland too long, so I don't have memory of these fires, but they certainly haven't stopped the momentum of 1+5's in my neighborhood. Just in the last ~2 years I've seen 3-4 (block-sized) buildings like these go up in my immediate vicinity.
Honestly, I'd never considered them to be negative; they're quick to build and encourage street-level retail and walkable neighborhoods. That seems like exactly what the Bay Area cities (and many other US cities) need right now. To me, they seem like a strict improvement over large residential-only blocks popular in the last 25 years.
If the wooden stud walls are still exposed during
construction, bonfire is a fair comparison, but
once the wooden walls are covered by sheetrock,
and doors and windows are in place to reduce
available air, the scenario is different.
In the East Bay case, a arson suspect has been arrested
on DNA evidence.
I've lived in two of these types of buildings, I live in one currently. The first one I lived in was at a big state college and was put up in very short time. The craftsmanship, or lack thereof that went into this building was very noticeable. My roommates outlet was at a 20 degree angle, the doors hollow, and the paint was very cheap.
The one I currently live in is a bit better, it's in a Midwestern state capitol and has nicer amenities but the doors are still hollow, and the paint is still cheap.
I don't hear anyone around me but I only share one wall with another apartment and I'm on the top floor so no one above me. That said, noise leaks to and from the hallways.
I think that's more of an economic incentives thing rather than any issue with this particular type of construction. You do a 1+5 building with soundproof doors, varied paint schemes for each unit, real wood flooring (not laminate), and so on. There's nothing about the building that prevents that. Developers have no incentive to do that stuff though because in most markets there's a big deficit in new construction and people will rent it, even if the doors are hollow and every wall is off-white.
I like the style, in that I like mixed development and midrise density, but I agree. A lot of this stuff is being thrown up with little thought to longevity.
Has someone done the math comparing these structures to all-concrete structures in terms of CO2/energy usage? I'm sure concrete lasts longer, but if a mostly wood structure lasts half as long but creates less than 50% of the emissions then it should come out ahead?
The average wood structure with concrete foundation lasts 120 years. We have a good understanding of how much CO2 is costs to build an all-concrete structure today, and we have a good understanding of how much CO2 it costs to build a conventional building today. How much CO2 will it cost to build the replacement building in ~100 years from now? What will the energy requirements of a conventional building built 100 years from now be compared to the energy requirements of our options today? Think about how much different a structure built in 1918 is compared to one build today.
It could even come out a win at “last’s half as long” and “costs 60% of”, if a portion of the concrete buildings get abandoned or demolished before their life expectancy is up because of changed requirements.
Extreme example: many Olympic Games venues don’t need a life expectancy of decades.
another thing to consider is that approx. half the emissions associated with a building come from heating and cooling during its lifetime. saving 10% in carbon for the construction and then skimping on say, double glazing and passive solar means you lose out over the long term.
Another growing architectural trend in American cities is what is often called a "Texas Doughnut" or "Dallas Doughnut": a multi-level parking garage wrapped in apartments. Ground-floor commercial space may be included as well.
It is a mall, more-or-less. There are shops and restaurants in and around it. To be fair, it looks much better from street view than it does from the satellite view. For most American cities, "impressively hideous" is standard issue.
You don't see it from street level, though. It's just ugly from an aerial view. At street level, all you see is the outside of the building, which looks like a regular building, and you have a few tunnels here and there that lead to the parking garage.
Underground isn't feasible in Texas. Our soil is all clay here, and it's ridiculously expensive to dig through.
The only buildings I've seen here with basements are giant skyscrapers in Downtown Dallas and a handful of buildings at the University of Texas at Dallas.
It's not typical to have underground construction in Dallas. It is partly due to the expansive clay soil composition. Furthermore, there is not much pressure to make efficient use of land because the city is already quite sprawling. The cost of building underground would almost certainly not be justified.
In addition to the difficulty of underground construction in Texas that others have pointed out, there's also the issue of parking minimums that most new construction projects require. Legally, that parking has to go somewhere.
I wonder how you would determine this, given that free parking is a substantial sunk cost which would otherwise discourage car ownership in favor of fewer vehicles or other modes?
I grew up in Texas and saw what seemed to be a substantial over-supply of parking.
I think the issue is that it only takes a single office building or big box store to overflow its parking for people to internalize the notion that parking is scarce and we need to require more of it. All the empty parking goes unnoticed because empty parking spots or parkings lots aren't, individually, a problem.
I would put the commanul garden/park on the top level of the parking garage and have hanging/climbing plants go down the various sides so interior apartments have something nicer to look at.
It still meets the parking requirements, and yet is a lot prettier and more useful.
Underground parking structures cost something on the order of 5x as much as aboveground parking structures.
And aboveground parking structures are already ungodly expensive. One example given from The High Cost Of Free Parking (which is an amazing book that everyone should read, or at least read a summary of) looked at a study of parking facilities and found that the amortized per-parking spot cost of building an above-ground parking facility, including construction, maintenance, and staffing, was $120,000 per spot. 5x that and you're looking at half a mil per spot for undergrounding it.
Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots).
Even if you could actually get everyone on board to spend so much, you'd be so dramatically increasing the unit cost of housing in that facility that you'd start getting all the typical gentrification problems. Your typical middle class family can't afford an extra 1/2 million dollars on their mortgage, so if you add that extra 1/2 mil the only way you're getting paying customers is to target the luxury top of the market.
----
Pre-emptive rebuttal: one might say "well, if each parking spot already costs $120k, that argument applies just as well to the existing parking facility". I agree! Mandatory parking minima are an ungodly expensive tax on our society. If parking costs could be fully internalized and then each individual resident was presented with the option to forego the parking spot in exchange for taking that much off of their mortgage, I suspect that a _lot_ of them would forego the parking spot. But, by law, they are not allowed that option.
This is doubly perverse when you realize that the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at an apartment complex is significantly _more_ expensive than the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at (eg) a suburban single family home, and yet the people who live in an apartment complex are significantly more likely to have good access to mass transit and so they're being made to pay much much more for something that they need somewhat less than the average perosn
> Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots).
Also, the picture here is from a mixed-use development, not just a housing complex (it's from the West Village in Uptown Dallas; I posted a Street View link in another comment if you're interested). There's retail on the ground floor.
Nobody in Dallas is going to go shopping or out to eat if we can't drive there and find a place to park. I can't even count the amount of times my friends or family have said "eh, let's go somewhere else" or "we'll come back another day" just because we couldn't find a place to park. No parking spots means businesses go under. So not only do you need 2-3 parking spots per unit, you need parking for all the customers of the retail establishments on the ground floor.
Not that cheaper units ever have a nice view, but I can only imagine the misery of living with a parking garage view (with attendant parking garage sounds).
I've seen a few of these being built in Mountain View... now I understand that it's a trend.
I haven't been inside one, but it has to be better than the Karate Kid-style apartment building with all the entrances facing inwards towards a central courtyard/pool/garden which is common around California. Those are like living in a Motel, where every noise from your neighbors echoes around the central area.
The other style is the 'mega-apartment' complexes which have their own issues as well. I have been inside those, and they're universally depressing. I wonder what it is that Americans can't figure out how to create housing which encourages community instead of killing it. Maybe the One-Plus-Five is the answer?
I don't see a problem with the 1+5 style. I think the street level retail is important for making the area seem lively especially if they are built near the caltrain station "downtowns" like Palo Alto, Mountain View or Sunnyvale. I certainly prefer this style to gated or enclosed apartment communities style.
The best style I saw was in Northern Virginia where around every DC metro station was a cluster of high rise apartments, high rise offices and malls with regular suburb once you walk a couple of blocks away.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadI'm just glad we're moving away from strip malls.
"It is hard to imagine that fifty years onward folks would get excited about the one-plus-five buildings or contemplate an adaptive re-use. Too flimsy to last even that long, these buildings will probably have to be demolished once they become obsolete, unable to stand as the testimony of our times."
He talks about strong or weak "bones" and contends that this sort of stick-built construction doesn't have good strong "bones."
In the US the bigger issue is, in 50 years will it make any sense for the building owner to pay to maintain the building? Putting up a long lasting building in certain places in Detroit 50 years ago may have made sense... but now it could be in a completely worthless ghetto, everybody has moved from the area.
Or, as the saying goes "In the US, 100 years is a long time"
Cities need buildings that are durable, long lasting, and that have depreciated in value!
I used to have this bias and, to some degree still do - at least aesthetically.
However, after building two homes I have come to really appreciate the strength and earthquake resiliency of stud walls clad with plywood sheathing. This kind of shear-wall structure is very strong and quite inexpensive.
A "good building" made of brick or stone - like you see in Europe and the East Coast (and that I find very aesthetically pleasing) are very, very fragile to earth shaking.
I don't think the "bones" are the problem - the problem is the dressing. Double thick insulation in the walls, noise isolated (or simply double-thick) sheetrock and a 1/4 layer of rubber between the subfloor and the flooring surface (and perhaps some other ingredients) are all you need to make a studwall/stickbuilt structure very, very "solid" and noise isolated, etc.
His other arguments make sense to an extent, but frankly I tend not to trust any architectural commentary from people who judge a building by its cover, and I think the criticisms in these comments bear that out.
The suburbs and shopping streets of London or Dublin contain row upon row of identical buildings.
Things like this are not uncommon:
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Modzelew...
[1] https://www.bijlmer.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/900x450.j...
[2] https://farm1.static.flickr.com/461/18997407772_c525f69da1_b...
That's not to say this is necessarily bad. It allows for safety and environmental standards in buildings people are able to afford because of minimal marginal compliance cost.
"The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC."
I focused on usage, you focused on construction.
PS: I agree that Retail is a common use for the ground floor of these buildings. But it’s not the only use for the ground floor.
Until a few years ago, it was fairly uncommon for an architect to go beyond four stories with wood-frame construction. Today, many designers choose five stories of wood over concrete podiums as a way to cost-effectively increase the density of projects. (Architectural Record March 2014)
They are all over the place, to mixed success.
When they work well, neighborhoods are revitalized with local businesses and people become active in their local community, kids play outside, and friends have places to mingle locally.
When they fail, it is a barrage of "for lease" signs on bottom floor windows as the retail spaces sit empty.
Even Seattle can only support a finite number of coffee shops and the boutiques have to compete with supermarkets, department stores, and online retailers.
The Suzhou metro region in China has ~3x the population of the Seattle metro, but way, way, more than 3x the retail.
Kyoto is the same way, comparable to the Seattle Metro, way more retail.
It may also be that America tends towards larger retail outlets, we have a lack of high quality smaller restaurants, and the % of boutiques to larger stores (Macy's, etc) here seems different than in other countries.
For that matter, it was interesting to me that many of the large department stores in Japan are made up of what we'd think of as smaller boutique retailers who just so happen to be located right next to each other. It is a very different way to shop, in an American department store, the store runs everything and may have different brands broken out into sections. In a fair number of Japanese department stores, each brand seemed to be an independent retailer!
(This was super cool for variety and price points.)
I noticed something similar in China as well, not quite in the same way, and large name brand owned stores seemed much more popular there, but there were plenty of malls that consisted of tiny local stores all lined up next to each other.
I've also noticed that the minimum sqft for the newer mixed use buildings seems to be rather large. Compare the newer buildings to what you find in lower Queen Ann, where there are more tiny stores sitting around, same thing around Fremont.
On a related note, I'd love to see more restaurants that fit only 5 or 6 people in them, with just a chef running the whole show. Is it less efficient? Maybe, but the food is better.
If you want something in that vein, Max's World Cafe in DT Issaquah is tiny, and the chef, Edna, is incredible and friendly. I could do with 10x restaurants of that size! Modern construction just isn't setup to pop out a bunch of 150 sqft restaurants in a block though.
I wonder what all the factors are that contribute to the increase in small businesses. I would like to see an increase in these types of retail businesses and restaurants. Kyoto, and to a lesser proportional degree Suzhou, have much more tourism than Seattle has. Both cities experience more foot traffic. Both cities are much older. I wonder if there are any differences on the retail market, business capital market, or legal regulations that encourage empty retail spots to be quickly filled in Kyoto and Suzhou. I wonder if Asian retailers feel strong competition from online orders. The Seattle housing market, either with market forces or legal regulation, have more complete kitchens than the Kyoto/Suzhou housing market. I wonder what effect this has on the restaurant market.
> On a related note, I'd love to see more restaurants that fit only 5 or 6 people in them, with just a chef running the whole show. Is it less efficient? Maybe, but the food is better.
Food trucks are a very close approximate to this type of restaurant.
The quality is a world of difference though.
Those tiny restaurants in other countries have real chefs with full, if small, kitchens, cooking sit down meals.
Best bowl of ramen I had in Japan was a single chef establishment, he was in a U-shaped open kitchen and guests sat around him.
> I wonder if there are any differences on the retail market, business capital market, or legal regulations that encourage empty retail spots to be quickly filled in Kyoto and Suzhou.
I think the very existence of small retail spots helps!
> and to a lesser proportional degree Suzhou, have much more tourism than Seattle has.
In 2017 Seattle had 39.9 million tourists (https://www.visitseattle.org/press/press-releases/seattle-se...), in 2013 Suzhou had 1.7 million (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/jiangsu/suzhou/travel/2013-09...)
FWIW, if anyone reading this is wondering where to go next, I'd recommend Suzhou! (or visit Seattle in late spring, Suzhou in early autumn!)
Every year at PAX West I am saddened by the lack of good food around DT Seattle for people to eat. Granted downtown is largely a business district, but I bet Subway gets the majority of PAX West food sales!
From the builder's perspective, I'm sure it must be cheaper to build a smaller number of larger units, and from a landlord's perspective, it is probably better to have a smaller number of larger tenants; but from the neighborhood's perspective, it would be nice if there were more little hole-in-the-wall spaces for niche businesses.
‘What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC.’
The last paragraph starts with "For centuries the quality of their buildings and a certain permanence set cities apart". That's a really good joke. The author even points to this earlier with "The sameness [of 1+5s] isn't like East Berlin's "Plattenbauten" (precast concrete buildings) around Alexanderplatz, nor has it the uniformity of some of Baltimore's rowhouse neighborhoods." I'm legitimately not sure whether those cheaply constructed neighborhoods are supposed to be positive examples or not.
Well sure, but at least some houses used to be beautiful and long-lasting; nowadays, even large, expensive mansions are typically built in a cheap, slapdash manner, using techniques and materials that are not nearly as long-lasting or durable as the ones that would've been used to build a nice house a century ago.
For a really obvious example, just look at roofing materials; a good slate roof can last over a century with minimal maintenance, but nobody builds houses with slate roofs anymore. Instead, even high-end homes use asphalt shingles that last 20-30 years tops.
It makes shoveling a path adjacent to the house kind of a pain because you have to shovel it after snow falls and then again after the snow falls from the roof. Shoveling snow is also a lot more interesting when you have to listen for the sliding sound and GTFO or hug the house if you hear it.
Overall 10/10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDKoiwUk1M
Well, yea slate roofs cost 7X as much. No wonder people don't.
What I mean by it in this case is, we are able to support economically many more people having mansions than we used to. The trade-off is they rightfully earn the prefix of Mc.
I don't think that's true... the environmental cost of supporting this is huge and already unsustainable. Air conditioning is a great example of this.
Also, most normal housing was of dubious quality all throughout history, there is a reason many european cities decided to level vast parts of their working class housing districts after ww2. Mainly because it was far easier to start over (thanks to ww2 damage) and because most of these housing where simply to cheap to be worth restoring.
The frames are built from really thick wooden beams that can take a beating. I had a large tree fall on my house earlier this year, and the trunk bounced/slid off, doing only superficial damage to the roof and siding; I talked to multiple contractors and insurance people who said a newer house built using modern construction standards would've been flattened, or at least suffered serious structural damage.
Things like windows are built to last too. The original wooden sash cord designs are still functioning 100+ years after they were built, with the exception of a couple windows that needed the cords replaced, but that's relatively cheap and easy. I expect the same windows will continue to work another 100 years as long as they're cared for and maintained.
This isn't about "the democratization of luxury", as another commenter suggested. Cheap construction costs more in the long term. This is about a cultural shift toward favoring short-term over long-term thinking. Long-lasting wood sash cord windows would not be expensive to build in this day and age, and they could be quite energy efficient too with modern glass and weather stripping, but people don't think or care about the long term the way they used to, and so they'd would rather settle for cheap, shiny vinyl windows that yellow and crack and fall apart in a matter of decades.
They'd be relatively expensive because they require more labor to install, and these days labor is the biggest cost. Older homes had better craftsmanship because labor was much cheaper back then, even highly skilled labor.
Engineered, cookie-cutter building materials are a substitute for labor. They're also a substitute for the fact that high-quality, old-growth lumber is gone, so if you want dimensional stability and moisture resistance you have to rely on engineered solutions.
I have 90-year-old sash windows in my house. I think they're great aesthetically and mechanically but previous owners didn't properly maintain them (because labor is expensive!) so they're nearing their useful life. Equivalent replacements will be quiet expensive, not to mention the labor to make sure they're installed properly, modern or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
Even before reading the caption, that picture -- absent any obvious tourist landmarks -- immediately made me think of the same location rendered in one of the Assassin's Creed games... I can't tell whether that's funny, sad, or bizarrely positive. Maybe all three.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house)
Our house (in Buffalo, NY area) turned 100 this year, and there are thousands of houses just like it in the Buffalo area. In fact, most of the housing that was built in the late 1800s and early 1900s is still standing:
https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2015/06/28/oldhomes...
I think our house could easily go another 100 years with the proper maintenance.
I don't think that the linked article actually says that.
What it does say is that Buffalo has the oldest housing stock in the country with a median construction year of 1954. I would guess that to be mostly an artifact of the declining population of the area, which peaked between 1960 and 1970.
As for population, you have to be careful with the statistics on this because, while the area did lose population since the 70s, there was also a lot of flight from the city to the suburbs over the same time period. So, it is often more instructive to look at the total population of western NY instead of just the city of Buffalo.
The key is that these old homes have very good "bones", so even a gut job can use the original structure intact. Combine that with the fact that Buffalo's real estate is relatively inexpensive still (it's starting to get up there, though), and extensive renovations aren't too bad on the wallet.
Ultimately, like certificates of authenticity on diamonds, the upper class will settle on some easily identified but hard to fake styles for expensive homes, and the cycle will repeat.
Yes, but when older homes were built labor (even highly skilled labor) was comparatively much cheaper and lumber came from old-growth trees.
Most homes built today (cheap or not) will literally begin to fall apart in months if they're not kept temperature and humidity controlled.
To build a house today using a mix of modern technology (electrical, plumbing, foundation, etc) with the quality of wood and finishing used in older homes would be very expensive compared to typical construction, even in high-end developments.
Honestly, I'd never considered them to be negative; they're quick to build and encourage street-level retail and walkable neighborhoods. That seems like exactly what the Bay Area cities (and many other US cities) need right now. To me, they seem like a strict improvement over large residential-only blocks popular in the last 25 years.
In the East Bay case, a arson suspect has been arrested on DNA evidence.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/East-Bay-housing...
The one I currently live in is a bit better, it's in a Midwestern state capitol and has nicer amenities but the doors are still hollow, and the paint is still cheap.
The average wood structure with concrete foundation lasts 120 years. We have a good understanding of how much CO2 is costs to build an all-concrete structure today, and we have a good understanding of how much CO2 it costs to build a conventional building today. How much CO2 will it cost to build the replacement building in ~100 years from now? What will the energy requirements of a conventional building built 100 years from now be compared to the energy requirements of our options today? Think about how much different a structure built in 1918 is compared to one build today.
Extreme example: many Olympic Games venues don’t need a life expectancy of decades.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RDQh277PWAY/UXx7Ya3u-ZI/AAAAAAAAA-...
https://goo.gl/maps/sbkieWpfdv62
Here: https://goo.gl/maps/CFbDSxyhkXP2
Other than that little tunnel, you wouldn't be able to tell there's a parking garage inside.
Excavation is expensive and toss in an under-utilized garden space- You could probably run for office with those ideas.
Pros of this idea: Looks pretty. A few people can grow tomato's for a fun hobby.
Cons of this idea: More expensive and unavailable for lower income.
To be fair, I'm overtly sympathetic to the lowest income.
The only buildings I've seen here with basements are giant skyscrapers in Downtown Dallas and a handful of buildings at the University of Texas at Dallas.
I grew up in Texas and saw what seemed to be a substantial over-supply of parking.
I think the issue is that it only takes a single office building or big box store to overflow its parking for people to internalize the notion that parking is scarce and we need to require more of it. All the empty parking goes unnoticed because empty parking spots or parkings lots aren't, individually, a problem.
It still meets the parking requirements, and yet is a lot prettier and more useful.
And aboveground parking structures are already ungodly expensive. One example given from The High Cost Of Free Parking (which is an amazing book that everyone should read, or at least read a summary of) looked at a study of parking facilities and found that the amortized per-parking spot cost of building an above-ground parking facility, including construction, maintenance, and staffing, was $120,000 per spot. 5x that and you're looking at half a mil per spot for undergrounding it.
Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots).
Even if you could actually get everyone on board to spend so much, you'd be so dramatically increasing the unit cost of housing in that facility that you'd start getting all the typical gentrification problems. Your typical middle class family can't afford an extra 1/2 million dollars on their mortgage, so if you add that extra 1/2 mil the only way you're getting paying customers is to target the luxury top of the market.
----
Pre-emptive rebuttal: one might say "well, if each parking spot already costs $120k, that argument applies just as well to the existing parking facility". I agree! Mandatory parking minima are an ungodly expensive tax on our society. If parking costs could be fully internalized and then each individual resident was presented with the option to forego the parking spot in exchange for taking that much off of their mortgage, I suspect that a _lot_ of them would forego the parking spot. But, by law, they are not allowed that option.
This is doubly perverse when you realize that the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at an apartment complex is significantly _more_ expensive than the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at (eg) a suburban single family home, and yet the people who live in an apartment complex are significantly more likely to have good access to mass transit and so they're being made to pay much much more for something that they need somewhat less than the average perosn
Also, the picture here is from a mixed-use development, not just a housing complex (it's from the West Village in Uptown Dallas; I posted a Street View link in another comment if you're interested). There's retail on the ground floor.
Nobody in Dallas is going to go shopping or out to eat if we can't drive there and find a place to park. I can't even count the amount of times my friends or family have said "eh, let's go somewhere else" or "we'll come back another day" just because we couldn't find a place to park. No parking spots means businesses go under. So not only do you need 2-3 parking spots per unit, you need parking for all the customers of the retail establishments on the ground floor.
I haven't been inside one, but it has to be better than the Karate Kid-style apartment building with all the entrances facing inwards towards a central courtyard/pool/garden which is common around California. Those are like living in a Motel, where every noise from your neighbors echoes around the central area.
The other style is the 'mega-apartment' complexes which have their own issues as well. I have been inside those, and they're universally depressing. I wonder what it is that Americans can't figure out how to create housing which encourages community instead of killing it. Maybe the One-Plus-Five is the answer?
The best style I saw was in Northern Virginia where around every DC metro station was a cluster of high rise apartments, high rise offices and malls with regular suburb once you walk a couple of blocks away.