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walkitoutA _whole_ lot of people keep talking about the difficulty of converting a commercial building, with a large, square floor plate, to a residential building, which tends to NOT have a large square floor plate because of windows and so forth.
I’ve always felt this was kind of stupid, and I know you’re thinking, you probably liked those Charlie Munger dorms, too, walkitout, what’s wrong with you, and honestly, I _did_ think it was reasonable to at least consider the tradeoff of private room no window vs. NOT private room with window. But that’s actually not where I’m going here; I don’t really _want_ to turn empty commercial office space into the slums / flophouses of the future (altho I would support that, because I would argue that a flophouse room in a minimally converted commercial office space building would be an improvement over sleeping rough, and if you got a lock on your own private room door, so much the better, altho I would argue in favor of only doing this in buildings with an up-to-code, maintained fire suppression system).
What I _don’t_ understand is the absence of the kind of thinking that went into live/work spaces when converting from factories to residential via “loft” apartments. Factories had ceilings that were ludicrously tall, which created a problem when converting to residential, and “loft” became a trend.
Given that the offices are empty because people are working from home, and most people don’t have adequate space in their city apartments for their working from home, it does seem like a live/work setup could create bigger slices into that large square floor plate. I, personally, would want my bedroom nice and dark in the interior, and have the light for daytime in shared / office spaces at the outside. However, for legal reasons, they’d probably encourage a different pattern. But if you left it largely open space with configurable partial walls, you know, like cubicles . . .
I’ve always felt this was kind of stupid, and I know you’re thinking, you probably liked those Charlie Munger dorms, too, walkitout, what’s wrong with you, and honestly, I _did_ think it was reasonable to at least consider the tradeoff of private room no window vs. NOT private room with window. But that’s actually not where I’m going here; I don’t really _want_ to turn empty commercial office space into the slums / flophouses of the future (altho I would support that, because I would argue that a flophouse room in a minimally converted commercial office space building would be an improvement over sleeping rough, and if you got a lock on your own private room door, so much the better, altho I would argue in favor of only doing this in buildings with an up-to-code, maintained fire suppression system).
What I _don’t_ understand is the absence of the kind of thinking that went into live/work spaces when converting from factories to residential via “loft” apartments. Factories had ceilings that were ludicrously tall, which created a problem when converting to residential, and “loft” became a trend.
Given that the offices are empty because people are working from home, and most people don’t have adequate space in their city apartments for their working from home, it does seem like a live/work setup could create bigger slices into that large square floor plate. I, personally, would want my bedroom nice and dark in the interior, and have the light for daytime in shared / office spaces at the outside. However, for legal reasons, they’d probably encourage a different pattern. But if you left it largely open space with configurable partial walls, you know, like cubicles . . .
no subject
Date: 2022-12-07 04:12 am (UTC)link from Tweet: https://nightbeatseu.ca/the-sad-bastard-cookbook/
oooh!
Date: 2022-12-07 05:35 am (UTC)