This article gives Calgary credit for taking its underused downtown office space and repurposing it for residences. It hardly seems a unique idea and done of these articles gloss over a lot of details. But it also makes sense. Is this the way forward? Hype? Practical? This must have been done in many other places?
That sort of thing already is going on in many places. The article suggests that it started in Calgary after the oil price crash in 2014 left many downtown Calgary buildings empty, so perhaps they have a lead of a couple of years. (On the other hand, conversions of factory and industrial spaces into live/work lofts have gone on for a long time.)
BTW, this is a gift link to a New York Times article about how these conversions can be difficult. Older office buildings, which often already had operable windows and don’t appeal to modern office tenants, are easier to convert. But newer modern buildings are sealed, and have vast open floor plans. That won’t work when apartments have to have exterior windows. The article nicely illustrates how a modern office floor can be converted to apartments.
Thanks for an interesting article. I wonder how tall a building can be before the “create an internal courtyard” approach no longer brings enough light to the lower floors (if there is a limit) ?
Living around the “courtyard” looks like living in a prison cell.
Not for me.
A lot of buildings in New York City have “air wells”. You don’t get a lot of light, but the window opens, and you can peer up and see the sky.
I think and hope this is the future. So much square footage of under-utilized indoor space, so great the need for housing in my state. San Francisco it dipping their toe in the water and trying to streamline the process:
I would imagine that the airflow is minimal and views worse. But it’s not like there are no flaws in other cheap apartments in nice areas, or that some degree of compensation could not be provided by nice amenities and open areas. I wonder how much magic one can work with mirrors. If the wells were big enough they might be better?
At least in NYC, the point isn’t the view. It’s ventilation and light.
Very cool article!
Like others, I wouldn’t want to live facing the courtyard, but it’s better than no window and it helps reuse these behemoths.
Cities should mandate that new office buildings be designed from the start so that they can be converted into housing without too much trouble. The article mentions cutting a courtyard through the center of the building. Instead of this having to be a complicated conversion, have the structure of the building be such that it’s ready for a courtyard if necessary. The office layout can be one huge floor, but if converted to housing, it would be just a matter of doing the cutout for the courtyard. Offices with very big floors could be designed so that multiple courtyards could be cut through. This would also enable partial conversion from the top down. It could be mixed use, with the top floors being housing and the bottom being office. As the demand changes, the depth of the courtyard could change so that the top X floors are housing and the bottom Y floors are office. They could also plan for things like window changes, plumbing changes, etc. Sure, it would add to the cost, but it would be better for the city’s economy in the long run to be able to have flexible buildings which serve the current needs of the population rather than single use buildings which become rundown from lack of use. The city would need to mandate this as part of the building code since developers aren’t going to do it otherwise.
A courtyard could be a nice garden and park and barbeque area. It might be possible to remove horizontal pieces too, though more structural issues come into play. You could put balconies on it in a big enough space.
I’m not sure if you meant mirrors in the apartment or outside the apartment, but one thing that might be beneficial is to have some moveable mirrors or optics on the roof above the courtyard such that the sunlight is always beamed down to the bottom of the courtyard. So rather than the courtyard just getting sun at noon, the courtyard would get sun all day long. That would help provide illumination to the apartments at the bottom of a deep courtyard.
I’ve been in apartments in older buildings in NYC where the side window faces a brick wall just a few feet away. From the front the buildings were edge-to-edge, but the side walls sloped in as you went back. This made a small gap between the buildings for light and air to pass through. But there wasn’t really much light since the gap was small.
Outside ones, with the idea of ensuring light enters the space. Even fans, to ensure air does. Practical? No idea.
One issue with mirrors outside apartments is that they would take light away from the lower-level apartments. Your mirror would cast a shadow on the ones below. It would be good for your apartment, but the apartments below you wouldn’t be happy. And you probably wouldn’t be happy if the apartment above yours had an outside mirror. But if instead there was a mirror on the roof, it could beam down light and make the courtyard brighter all day long.
That seems a hefty burden to impose on the developer for something that may never be needed. I think most office buildings are never converted to anything.
It’s not like you can blind people or pilots with a well placed mirror. And it could be changed into a magnifying glass in colder climates.
Yes I lived in one in NYC for two years. It was a 2 room apartment and the living room/kitchen had such a window. The bedroom had no window which, according to that article, is illegal in NYC.
It’s been happening in the UK for years, with mixed results, depending on how thought-out the developments are - just warehousing people or considering their needs more widely?
This points out some more problems.
Not sure this link will work Lessons From a Renters’ Utopia - The New York Times
TLDR? It points to Vienna as an example of what government intervention in the market could do. I expect the real estate industry in North America is too entrenched and powerful for anything like that to happen, but it may help put Calgary and similar efforts in a different light.