3 ms·
I highly encourage people to read that NYT link, the diagrams are excellent. That said, the article also shows how you address the problem of no natural light:
by kibwen 3y ago
I highly encourage people to read that NYT link, the diagrams are excellent. That said, the article also shows how you address the problem of no natural light: you punch a hole through the center of the building (and in New York City's case, this permits the developer to "move" that lost floorspace into newly-built units on top of the building). Far from a trivial solution, but also far from impossible.
- nradov 3y agoThat "solution" is literally impossible for most office buildings where the core is structural and contains most of the building machinery. For those it's cheaper to demolish and rebuild.
- kibwen 3y agoThe article shows an example of a building where one structural column had to be moved in order to accommodate the hole, and where the hole itself is off-center in order to disturb as few structural elements as possible. Indeed, every building converted in this way will probably need its own bespoke solution (e.g. if the elevator shaft is dead-center, you might cut two smaller holes on either side), but even then it seems like it would be hard for it to be more expensive than starting over from scratch.
- ghaff 3y agoI'd need to be convinced the punch a hole is actually a good solution. I've stayed in lower-floor hotel rooms on a light well and they weren't great. (Of course, a lot of Manhattan hotel rooms aren't great from a natural light perspective--but I'd almost certainly have higher standards for something I was going to live in full-time.)
- jupp0r 3y agoYou could also have mixed use of buildings, putting residential on the outside and commercial on the inside.