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> This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal a
by mlyle 3y ago
> This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc.
Couldn't you just wall off the middle? I mean, you do get another set of windows on the inner courtyard, but it seems expensive to perform such major surgery on a building.
- xattt 3y agoDonuted buildings will forever remind me of the Ponte Tower building. (1) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/the-south-african-building-that-came-to-symbolize-the-apocalypse/517056/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/th...
- metadat 3y agoThe South African Building That Came to Symbolize the Apocalypse https://archive.today/qfZ91 https://archive.today/qfZ91
- kibwen 3y agoWell, we're calling them "donut holes", but they're actually rectangles. :P
- readthenotes1 3y agoDon't be such a square!
- AlbertCory 3y agoIn Hong Kong, pre-handover, I stayed in a windowless hotel room.
- alisonatwork 3y agoThose still exist in Hong Kong today. And many other places in the world, for that matter. Even apartments without windows aren't that uncommon. In subdivided floors they're cheaper than the street facing ones, but some people prefer them anyway because there is less noise from the road.
- okaram 3y agoI love to sleep in darkness. Stayed at an Airbnb with a windowless bedroom. Best sleep I ever had.
- pxmpxm 3y agoSecond, would pay extra for that
- AlbertCory 3y agoHave you guys tried blackout curtains?
- midasuni 3y agoI stayed in one in london last year. It was great until noisy people came back at 2am
- AlbertCory 3y ago2 great sleep killers: light and noise. "Windowless" only fixes one.
- kibwen 3y agoIf you don't use the center of the building, then you only have room for one "ring" of residential units, whose windows face the exterior of the building. If you cut a donut hole down the center of the building, now you have room for two rings of units. Furthermore, in places like NYC, developers are allowed to "bank" the floorspace that comprised the donut hole and add new construction on top of the building so that overall square footage remains the same.
- thfuran 3y agoThey have limits on building square footage but not height? Or is that a weird loophole in a height restriction?
- larubbio 3y agoI think there are limits on both. Floor area ratio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio) is how it is coded into regulations. The lot size and the height restrictions create a bounding box that the building needs to fit within.
- t3rabytes 3y agoCommon in NYC to do that to say you have the tallest building by height even if you were only approved to build X floors (your service floors don’t count) — from the couple videos I’ve watched about it over the years (see 432 Park Ave).
- mlyle 3y ago> Furthermore, in places like NYC, developers are allowed to "bank" the floorspace that comprised the donut hole and add new construction on top of the building so that overall square footage remains the same. Oh, yah, that's cool. You probably have a lot of systems surrounding the building (and ingress/egress) designed for that total volume.
- hardwaregeek 3y agoBut you effectively get another set of apartments that have interior windows. Sure they’re not gonna have a great view but they’re still rentable apartments
- steveBK123 3y agoDepending on what you do with the interior, they can actually be great apartments. Much quieter than street facing, put a nice little courtyard in the center.. etc.
- wolpoli 3y agoIt definitely needs to be designed properly. I once worked in an office where all the windows face a plain interior courtyard. It was terrible as nothing ever moved and you could only see the ground, more windows, and the sky.
- alisonatwork 3y agoMany apartments in Europe are designed this way. The interior courtyard in most of them just contains trash cans and residents' bicycles or mopeds. They're not especially interesting views. But people don't generally move to cities for exciting views out their window, the other benefits outweigh it.
- steveBK123 3y agoDepending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.
- ethanbond 3y agoI think they’re suggesting just having dead space in the middle.
- HWR_14 3y agoBecause that would convert space really badly. If you're making 10'x10' rooms out of a 100'x100' space, it's 74% dead space. If a floor is more than 10,000 sq feet, maybe 40,000 sq feet, it goes up to to 90%. I mean, numbers are made up, but the point holds.
- afavour 3y agoI’d be interested to see people get really creative with it. Throw a gym in on one floor. Cinema room on another. Storage units in a few more. Probably difficult to structurally support a pool on a floor not already designed for one but sure, let’s throw one in there too. A kids playroom is maybe a little depressing with no natural light but it could work. Hell: keep the middle commercial space and put a grocery store in. Obviously once you’re talking about true high rises you’re going to run out of possibilities and I know the maths is still very rough. But it’s an interesting thought exercise to think about just how many amenities you could pack into a building.
- seanthemon 3y agoSound like what inevitably happens to my Sims games, just start filling in those gaps Dance floor #3? Make it happen!
- viraptor 3y agoFunnily this is kind of possible. Tokyo has at least one dance club located in a residential high-rise, just padded enough that the sound doesn't carry into the apartments around it. It's been a while though and I can't find the name now - please post a link if anyone remembers where it was.
- jxramos 3y agoturn it into storage space I'd say
- stephenr 3y agoI would have thought it would make perfect storage space.