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So you want to turn an office building into a home?
- andrewfromx 4y agogreat, but they are forgetting one more detail. Even existing apartment buildings need to be fixed for remote renters. i.e. FLOW https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/ https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/
- smodo 4y ago> For Adam, the successes and lessons are plenty and we are excited to go on this journey with him and his colleagues building the future of living. I’m sorry, this is a joke right?
- quickthrowman 4y ago> I’m sorry, this is a joke right? Yes, but please don’t tell Andreesen Horowitz; they aren’t in on the joke.
- gumby 4y agoOh they are, they just cynically believe there are enough rubes that can be sold on the “vision”.
- duxup 4y agoI read that. I still don’t know what FLOW is.
- andrewfromx 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTHMwJ8kzjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTHMwJ8kzjw
- barbecue_sauce 4y agoPeople still take Adam Neumann seriously?
- andrewfromx 4y agofor me there is a world of difference between him and someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes committed crimes and put people's health in danger. Adam was just very good a playing the VC game.
- actionablefiber 4y ago> Adam was just very good at playing the VC game. And he is still playing that game! If in five years we all discover he turned this into a giant nepotistic money-losing dumpster fire and left his VC firm holding the bag while he got a cool $1B exit package, no one has a right to be mad.
- andrewfromx 4y agoto be fair, the $350 million a16z put in is secured by the 4,000 multi family apartment buildings he owns. i.e. he transferred the deeds from his own company to this joint thing owned by him and a16z in order to get the 350.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoAdam AND his wife are both unethical people bordering on fraud. I wouldn't buy or believe anything he says. He has still not taken responsibility for We Work, his part in its decline, and what appeared to be massive financial impropriety. Adam is a C-suite grifter, plain and simple.
- vsareto 4y ago>That is suddenly no longer true. This newfound flexibility has triggered the “Great Resignation”, where people prioritized other factors over professional considerations. Many people are voting with their feet and moving away from traditional economic hub cities to different cities, towns, or rural areas, with no diminishment of economic opportunity. >https://jobs.lever.co/flowlife https://jobs.lever.co/flowlife >All jobs ON-SITE I'm gonna pass on this venture fixing the problem, they can't even dogfood their own founding principles.
- andrewfromx 4y agowell that's not fair, that's like a company trying to build a settlement on the moon and complaining they are making all their workers build the necessary steps to get there on earth!
- photochemsyn 4y ago> "Such floor plans and building shapes translate well to apartments (although, of course, a common bathroom for 20 units won’t do)." Every floor would have to be completely ripped out and replumbed, you'd also want more insulation to avoid hearing the neighbors, ventilation systems for the kitchens and bathrooms, and probably about a dozen other issues necessitating a complete reconstruction program. It might be somewhat cheaper than building new housing from the ground up, but it's not going to be a quick easy operation.
- jjoonathan 4y agoRoughly how many months/years of rent is that? "Easy" and "hard" have to be understood in ROI terms, otherwise everything in the construction world looks intractably hard.
- woleium 4y agoat least there are plenty of elevators
- runlaszlorun 4y agoThink he pitched it as ‘WeWork for residential’?
- andrewfromx 4y agoa collection of articles about flow... https://remoterenters.com/ https://remoterenters.com/
- Svetlitski 4y ago> Apartments, obviously, need operable windows to vent cooking fumes and brighten living space. I for one would be perfectly happy to rent an apartment without any windows if it meant getting a place located in the heart of a major city. > although, of course, a common bathroom for 20 units won’t do Again, I’d be fine with dorm-style shared bathrooms as a trade-off for having an apartment with an excellent location. I suppose the overall sentiment I’m feeling is that I’d enjoy living in a dorm-style building for young professionals. Go ahead and throw in some large common rooms while you’re at it. I get that this isn’t for everyone, but I think there’d be enough demand from individuals in a similar demographic (i.e. professionals in their early 20’s) to make this viable, especially somewhere like SF.
- ajb 4y agoWashing people and clothes, and cooking, produce a lot of vapour which if not vented will produce mould. You will rapidly find that the health issues produced by mould are a more serious issue than location, which is why this is not left to the market.
- xnx 4y agoTrue, but bathrooms and laundry can be shared amenities (like in a dorm). Ventilation can be accomplished without windows via ducting.
- shadowofneptune 4y agoThat really invites mold. Forced air ventilation may satisfy the building code but is not as effective—especially if the power goes out.
- sokoloff 4y agoMy experience is that powered ventilation (especially when controlled by a humidistat for a bath or timer for a kitchen) is more effective than opening a passive window. The power is not out frequently enough in the US to be a detectable contributor to mold risk.
- 4y ago
- xnx 4y ago> Apartments, obviously, need operable windows to vent cooking fumes and brighten living space I assume this must be some building code law, otherwise there's a lot of room to get creative with active ventilation. If assumptions were challenged, there's a lot more possibilities for how to convert these spaces. A lot of people would be willing to rent a windowless space with a shared bathroom (e.g. https://www.fastcompany.com/90740511/heres-what-its-like-living-in-a-windowless-dorm-built-by-a-billionaire https://www.fastcompany.com/90740511/heres-what-its-like-liv...) if it meant they could live in a great location. Example: What if windowless apartments had a built-in 12" video wall like the one this YouTuber inexpensively DIY'ed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88wM6AN6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88wM6AN6Y
- vanviegen 4y ago> A lot of people would be willing to.. Sure, for a couple of years, when you're young and just using your house to sleep. Problem is that people who are not willing would also end up in these semi-houses. > What if windowless apartments had a built-in 12" video wall That would look really cool, but would do little for receiving the health and mood benefits of natural daylight. Or for the sense of being connected with whatever is out there.
- capableweb 4y ago> That would look really cool, but would do little for receiving the health and mood benefits of natural daylight. Or for the sense of being connected with whatever is out there. Add in some more light sources around the display that stimulates sunlight (something like CoeLux) and you might be able to get at least the mood benefits and some of the health ones too. Artificial sunlight therapy is frequently used in countries that gets very dark during the winter, where there isn't many sunlight hours. I remember some friends many years ago went to those kind of therapies in the winter times and felt benefits from it. Not sure exactly what light sources they used, but if you can manage to buy those, maybe it'll be at least a bit better?
- mcluck 4y ago
- zabzonk 4y agowidely seen as the most ugly (and corrupt, from the builders/landlords practices) block of flats in london,uk, is Centre Point (corner of new oxford st and charing cross rd) - originally intended as offices. i cannot imagine why people that can afford to live there would want to live there.
- boplicity 4y agoThe solution in the article of creating an inner "courtyard" seems to me to be absolutely horrendous, from a livability perspective. Imagine your only windows being into a tunnel 300 feet from the open sky. That's not actually a source of natural light. Sure, it's a possible source of ventilation. But really, this sounds like dystopian housing as opposed to anything someone would actually want to live in. That being said, it does have a convincing argument for converting older, smaller footprint buildings.
- xiaq 4y agoYeah, the moment I saw a photo of the "courtyard" my reaction went from "clever modern solution" to "what a bleak place to live"...
- ghaff 4y agoI've stayed in hotel rooms that were on a light well. Yes, you pretty much might as well not have a window. It's actually pretty common, especially on lower floors, for hotel rooms to be directly facing some other building and for many rooms not to have much of a view or natural light.
- raldi 4y agoI lived in a place like that when I was young. It was fine. Many, many young people get their first Manhattan apartments this way.
- LBJsPNS 4y agoThis article is kind of silly, as it seems to be based on the idea that nothing would be done to change the layout of these buildings before opening them up as living facilities. There's no reason each floor couldn't be gutted and refitted as lifing units; they currently reconfigure office layouts at will to suit the tenants. It's kind of reminiscent of some of the arguments about grow houses made when cannabis was being legalized. The opponents couldn't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that when warehouses became available legally there was no more need for grow houses. If office buildings are being used as housing there's zero reason to keep them configured as office buildings.
- ghaff 4y agoThe entire article is about the process of completely adapting the buildings so that they can be used for apartments.
- ghaff 4y agoA couple points from the article: - Older buildings are both less attractive as commercial space and easier/better to convert to apartments because their footprint makes it easier to get natural light and windows typically open. (That "courtyard" they added to one of the newer buildings being converted seems like it will be a pretty partial solution especially for apartments on lower floors.) - These conversions are expensive so the resulting apartments are on the luxury end so you're not going to have shared bathrooms or kitchens.