4 ms·

This is not usually possible because of the cost to run plumbing. You have to gut the entire facility in order to put kitchens and bathrooms in every apartment

• DominikPeters 11y ago
  True in practice, though shared bathrooms & kitchens are no impossibility.
• waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Yes, it costs some money, but it's been done countless times in old warehouses in cities and towns around the world. Of course, I don't think modern office buildings will have the appeal of "exposed brick" and "thick wooden support beams", but maybe the people of 100 years ago would have thought the same about those buildings.
• jessaustin 11y ago
  These places have slab floors, and jackhammering sucks, but that isn't the end of the discussion. They typically have really high ceilings, so false floors aren't impossible. Clever architecting can group plumbing-required rooms together. Also, if we're talking about low-income, alternative housing for singles and couples, is a janitor-included shared bathroom down the hall even a problem? Many of the old hotels that are used for this purpose also have this.
  • acveilleux 11y ago
    Lack of opening windows is a bigger deal. Replacing all the curtain walls and stripping the place down to concrete gets suspiciously close to new construction costs. The land had better be worth it. I've seen in down quite successfully in dense urban locations for condos but that only worked because the land was highly valuable and the building had grandfathered exemption from zoning / sightline laws for height.