Why don't we just turn empty offices into housing?
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- Опубликовано: 16 май 2024
- Many offices are sitting empty following the rise of working from home, while cities around the world face housing crises. Building new housing is extremely carbon intensive. Could converting unused offices into housing help solve both problems?
#planeta #officeconversion #greenbuilding
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Credits:
Reporter: Dave Braneck
Camera: Henning Goll
Video Editor: Frederik Willmann
Supervising Editor: Joanna Gottschalk
Factcheck: Jeannette Cwienk
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon
Interviewees:
Steven Paynter, Principal Architect, Gensler
Lily Langois, City Planner, San Francisco Planning Dept.
Pernilla Hagbert, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Benjamin Albrecht, Director of Development, International Campus
Marcus Gwechenberger, Head of Planning, Frankfurt
For important background information, thanks to also:
Stefan Bürger, GWH Housing Association
Darwn Gafori, International Campus
Read more:
US federal government incentivizing office to housing conversions: www.whitehouse.gov/cea/writte...
Some of the physical challenges of converting offices into housing: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:51 The Vacancy Problem
2:31 Housing’s environmental Impact
4:12 Adaptive Reuse
6:55 Improving City Planning
8:53 Cutting Red Tape
10:38 Potential
What is your city doing to fight the housing crisis?
listing large chunks of the city as 'culturally significant' so that theyre exempt from redevelopment, keeping them as single storey detatched homes
(theyre fighting on the crisis' side)
My city DGAF.
Actually nothing. I live in Bosnia. 😅 My hometown of Pale, has many weeks with over 400 ppm in winter.
absolutely nothing, the opposite in fact, they keep allowing more immigrants they not keeping track of and they keep blocking and new high density housing projects unless they unaffordable to people working on minimum wage
😭
A lot of offices would convert better to student housing, where common amenities like floor bathrooms and 1 large kitchen, quiet study space, would make a lot of sense and you could have larger spaces shared by 2 roommates. I know a lot of student housing is needed in many cities too and I think it might be a better middle ground.
I don't know if that would really work, being so disconnected from campuses and the infrastructure and culture that makes traditional residence work. Kids just aren't going to move downtown and pay those rents to share a kitchen. Plus you have to consider commutes to school, which may not be the best if you're a penniless student in a city without trains.
What can be done though is look into cooperatives and other buildings around the world that have shared spaces and see what they're doing. You can have you individual apartment/condo with your own kitchen and bathroom, but then have communal spaces on each floor. What would it be like to live there with a big astroturf yard in the middle of the building your kids could play in and natural light being piped in? What kinds of communal spaces, like study and hangout areas, or communal kitchens for group meals rather than necessity? Could you make a "home" theatre for the floor that can be reserved by the people on it? Or a gym? Can you put retail or other offices on other floors besides ground level? We just have to think about what can fill those spaces, rather than worrying about how you can't put more apartments there.
@@ScooterinAB What do you mean? Most students are living downtown in rooming houses or condos with roommates, basement suites already... there are several universities and colleges located in downtown Toronto. There would be no division.... aren't universities and colleges where you live in the downtown area of the city they are in? Student housing is in such short supply here!
@@ScooterinAB I disagree with all of your objections. I think students would be a great fit, and those recently out of school who would be willing to trade lower rent for fewer amenities would also be interested in such buildings.
In San Francisco, people will take ANYTHING to have a place to live and work in the city.
@@ASoundscapeofOurOwn UofT is downtown though. That's not as common in a lot of places, including in the US. I don't think any students in Edmonton or Calgary live downtown, and while the UofA would be more accessible from downtown, the UofC is quite a ways away.
@@hawkname1234 It wouldn't be low rent though. That's the problem. Students wouldn't be able to afford those places. They'd live elsewhere.
The housing crisis was created by the for-profit housing industry and predatory landlordism. Fixing it requires abolishing them in service of a housing for people. This measure simply opens up more spaces for enriching private profit-generating companies through new avenues of renting.
Exactly!
Abolish? How about WE change our habits! Much of the city's best amenities (museums, teathers...) are located near the downtown, and not everyone will like some 90 minutes back and forth on public transportation
The housing crisis is the failure of local government to see beyond the next few days. Social housing is a burden that they did not want, so someone had to provide it.
@@PLuMUK54 You must be talking about some specific example in one country or city, and even then the only two ways for local governments to "not want the burden" of ensuring social housing is 1) them being influenced by private profit interests to offload that opportunity to the latter or 2) The Thatcher Scenario, where the government policy is dictated by ideological interests of reshaping societal behaviour away from common welfare and social provision and towards privatisation and landlordism.
Supply vs demand. If enough of these offices are retrofitted with all of the facilities required for flats, it may reduce overall prices in cities.
A few years ago, my friend lived in a converted office block. It had been purchased by a charity and converted into social housing. It was an excellent flat, though a little quirky.
He had a large sitting room, with large windows giving views across to one of his city's universities. To one side was a kitchen, in a separate room, benefitting from a window. The extra space that was left over from the generous hallways, which led to the lifts, could have been wasted, but the designer had incorporated an entrance hall linking the bedroom, bathroom, and living areas. The quirkiest part was the bedroom, a long, seemingly narrow room, which nevertheless contained a queen-sized bed and a large dressing area.
Public areas included package room, 24 hour concierge service with a dedicated office, post room, and laundry.
This was social housing, and it shows that conversion does not need to be bad, nor does it need to be only for luxury. My friend has good memories of his time in that flat.
So nice. And who paid for it all? And did that investment make any economic sense? In the world of politics, and big public works projects, they don't really have to give a damn if their investment is a net loser. That lost cash could be used in lots of other things that made economic sense.
@@andyiswonderful hopefully from taxes. progressively incremental bracketed tax rates on ROI on assets WORK. especially in a AGI(what Ai see Ai do) world where Intellectual property is still legislatively protected.
Social housing is welfare housing for bums who don't want to pay rent.
@@andyiswonderfuli hope in your economic analysis there you are taking into consideration the economic losses of homelessness too. Are those people able to be productive members of society or do they reduce the value of things around them etc etc. In the suburb I live in Berth Australia I see homelessness. Most of them are young women who make their bed before leaving it under a pergola etc. Closer to the city of Perth they are messier.
See, in America. We let anyone into social housing even if they're a nutcase or a pyromaniac criminal who was released from jail only because of over crowding in a democrat jailbreak. Let's just say the entire building has to be torn down after about 10 years.
I think that in the future, we have to build more mixed-use buildings. In city centers, we can easily have buildings with shops, restaurants, and fitness centers on the ground floor, office spaces on floors 2-5, a hotel from floors 5-9, and apartments from floors 9-15. In this way, people don’t need to commute far for daily errands like shopping and fitness; their office can be in the same building or just two streets away, because many buildings have office spaces. Tourists have all the shops, stores, and other activities that do not involve sightseeing close by. It’s just an idea, maybe not ideal for all buildings and all locations, but some areas of cities can be used in this way. I also don’t understand why everything has to be concentrated in the city center or CBD. Why can’t we have smaller centers in different parts of the city, like every major residential area or suburb having a small center with a city-center-like vibe? Some apartment buildings, offices, shops, squares, entertainment areas, playgrounds, parks that serve the surrounding areas. I mean, they had them and they called them malls, which are awful representations of this.
The problem with that will be when the conspiracy nuts (aided and abetted by elmo muskrat) start saying that it's all part of the government/WEF agenda to control people and restrict freedom of movement (see "15-minute cities")...
I wonder if you can do one better and mix some of those uses into each floor. Can you have shops or things like doctor's offices spread throughout the building? Can you build indoor parks and entertainment areas on different floors? I wonder if people would appreciate living in more of a community type floor, rather than just a mixed use apartment block.
Malls were originally designed as a concept by a socialist for that very purpose, however corporations gutted them and made them soulless to maximise profit
In the Philippines they had office building and apartments on top of the malls, but the malls literally had everything you needed from a place to eat, fix your vehicle, grocery shop etc.
The main problem comes from the location and investment needed to do these types of conversions. The new units would be incredibly expensive to build AND the rent would show that. What we need to do is move out of the big city style of development and more into more rural/suburban sprawls. Also, why do we need office spaces in this day and age? Offices are on the way to becoming obsolete and that will change the dynamic of city life.
I think the plumbing would be one of the worst problems to deal with. Office buildings have one bathroom for each gender per floor, with multiple fresh water and drainage pipes. Apartments need fresh water and drainage pipes for all the kitchens, and all the bathroom, tubs, toilets and sinks in every unit. To install all those pipes and water supply would be daunting. Lots of tearing up of walls and floors. You almost have to gut the entire inside to do that. And all those extra pipes must have an impact on the load-bearing capabilities built into an office building. And then the video also noted individual heating and cooling in each unit that can be controlled by the unit. Most office buildings have master controls per floor and central heating and cooling systems. God bless if they can do it, but I wouldn't want to be the engineer figuring all that out.
I recently read the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and realized that back in the 50's - 60's, apartments and hotels had "shared bathrooms".
I think it still occurs in some countries with large populations of poor.
As late as the 1960’s, many homes in Britain did not have a bathroom.
Considering the fact that a lot of these cities have no public restrooms and the businesses in them limit the bathrooms to either customer only or employee only, poor people living in tents on the streets would probably be willing to settle for a shared bathroom.
Speaking as a formerly homeless from Denver, CO myself...
We Americans might need to be willing to live less "lavishly" than what we've become accustomed to.
We definitely need to take a few steps back in time, because the path we've come down Capitalism-Lane has reeeeally fukked us over.
Hey Mike! Yes, this is a huge challenge. Depending on the layout of the building, a lot has to be changed and often even an entirely new plumbing system.
@@youtubesucks1499 LOL!!!
RUclips troll sucks at trolling. 🤏🏻
Try again, little one.
You have quite a way to go...
@@youtubesucks1499 Fear not, little one.
Nobody wants you anyway... regardless of their gender. 🤏🏻
@@OthiqueI had considered the idea at some point of the type of living accommodations with private rooms but with public amenities such as bathrooms and kitchens, as a way to save money on housing and encourage socialization. Which, I still don't think is a terrible idea, but it isn't really one which supports family building as I feel most people who have/want children in the future wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of their children having to consistently be exposed to strangers for basic things like going to the restroom without their parents having to follow them. But maybe the problem is that housing seems primarily focused on a family environment when there are plenty of people seeking housing who either haven't gotten to that stage in their life or simply don't want that
This is a great idea in theory but in practice in the UK it has too often resulted in cramped and airless apartments. Proper planning and building regulations need to be enforced to make it work.
I'm glad there's another Brit here, I'm an architect, and this video was made for me (not actually, but allow me to explain).
My first stops are London and Leeds, in both cities there are many vacant and unused buildings of another use except housing, this is where I come in, I will repurpose the building and turn it residential.
One thing that's good about both cities, and Europe in General, is that they haven't taken zoning to the extreme, and for the most part is still mixed use.
I'm actually on my very first project, turning a church into apartments of 70, 1,2 and 3 bedroom, 1 and 2 bathroom.
The best thing is its in a very good part of the city, the building is in dire need of use and practically empty having about 10 rooms on 24mx33mx20m space.
I'm going to copy this video into my planning proposal.
One thing is resenditial housing isn't usually more than 15m wide, because each room needs natural light. I know the greedy property developers don't care for the wellbeing of people, they would cram as many people and charge as much as they can, bastards!
I'm different, I will make the place luxurious, breathable and affordable. I'm not sure where in the UK you live, but I live in London and the rental prices are eye watering! £1500 every 28 days for a 12m² room! Which is a complete rip off! I was in Turkey and a person can get a high rise 3 bedroom 2 bathroom 150m² for about £200!
Whats better about Turkey is they have their mixed use buildings down to perfection, at street level you find stores of all kinds, then from floor 1 it's resenditial. I've noticed this in 5 cities.
One thing not mentioned in this post is price, if they just charge a rip off, the new accommodation will stay vacant.
@@sandrajones8245 That sounds great, I hope your project goes well
@philiptaylor7902 thank you
ok boomer
@@rgw5991 Does it show that much?
From the challenges that they are alluding to in this video, it sounds like office buildings are much more suitable for creating rooming houses, hostels, and cohousing, instead of luxury or single family homes. This could serve the lowest income bracket really well, with homes where tenants who share a home have access to a common bathing and kitchen facility, and private bed /living areas. They could be great stepping stones for singles and young people, and offer a lot more dignity than just cramming four adults into a home designed for a family.
Such dignity in having to get up and walk 100' to take a leak in the night to discover someone OD on the toilet or feces smeared. This type of housing just keeps the homeless in poverty as no Matter what they claim before hand they are predatory with fees and charges for things and crime. It never feels like home nor is it.
The side cost for the flates will be insane with all the maintanance + elevators
@@ravanpee1325not sure cause the cost will be shared with so many tenants
Agreed, but it is important to have mixed units to avoid developing a slum.
They mentioned it was hard to make ALL the apartments nice. Well, make SOME nice apartments and have SOME dorm style rentals.
Keeping this in mind should ease up most of the difficulties in design and implementation
Living in the US, it is so refreshing to see a European perspective where this is considered possible. The predatory perspective here is to use this idea to get rich rather than to solve a problem. Developments I see in cities like NYC seem unlikely to ever come down in cost for renters, even decades after they are fully converted. At the same time, most of the postwar tenement and apartment buildings are falling apart.
very true. But, please stop worshipping a "European Perspective", as if Europe is some fabulous utopia that us stupid, barbaric Americans should deign to emulate. There is a LOT of crap going on in Europe, and a lot of virtue in America.
When you strive to only achieve the basics you have failed as an adult
"predatory perspective here is to use this idea to get rich rather than to solve a problem"
You think the europeans are doing it for an ideal? No, just like the americans - they ran out territory in city centers and there is a market for it. You think all those people that can't afford a house will all of a sudden have enough to purchase an apartment downtown?
NYC has such excess demand that no amount of construction is likely to fully solve the problem in most Americans’ view. NYC housing is actually cheap compared with incomes compared to many places in Europe, or even parts of the United States.
I encourage everyone to look up Davenport Iowa Building collapse. America definitely can't seem to accomplish building reuse without corruption
Thank you for presenting an “incremental-but-valid solution” perspective. It seems to me that we often discount solutions because they don’t *completely* solve the problem, when instead, the desired outcomes can come from employing multiple, smaller innovations. ❤
yeah it is a bit weird how gung-ho the older generations of developers are to knock down 1950s-1990s era architecture for being "Dated" when it still serves a good purpose and some of them can be integreated with new urban fabric, america needs better cities but retrofitting is a lot smarter of a solution than mass redevelopment of over half of every american city, especially with how you could probably put taller buildings in the empty spaces in the suburbs without having to completely obliterate what was there before, 90s era communties maybe not but before the rise of the mcmansion they were slightly denser, also low rise areas could exist as some kind of village like area
This seems like a very good way to also support downtown businesses like restaurants, etc which could benefit from people who would live downtown all day and not just during daytime business hours.
This reuse was done in a building near me. Apartments sold for $78K and had 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, large living, kitchen areas.
I'm sad I discovered them too late, all sold out. But it was a great opportunity for a few Millennials to buy their first homes
one thing i hope they fix, every 2020s and afterward development kinda flattens architectural history, we need new urbanism but older generations want to "update" or tear down anything that doesen't look like 2024 ignoring architectural history, if a 1970s neighborhood is redeveloped the midrises should have 1970s architecture instead of being simply millenial modernism or whatever because ive seen too many important buildings knocked down or remodeled and uglified into boring gray spaces because the older style was "dated" or some meaningless consumerist bullshit like that
It's not that some office buildings are totally unviable, they just wouldn't work with antiquated zoning rules or at the density that developers would desire. The main issue i see with these conversions is that developers are driven to squeeze as many units as possible or make them as high-end as they can to make more profit.
This is already the case. There are numerous empty studios in the downtown apartments in my city. They sell the penthouse, corner units and rooms with a view. Then they keep the other units jacked up because the people who would rent them would bring the building image down.
Developers don't want to look at anything that isn't easy guaranteed payday. If the building owners or co-op takes that on, it can get done. That's how the majority of these conversions happen, see previous rounds of these types of conversions in the 60s and 90s.
It's not just zoning laws. You have to do a pretty major renovation on a building where there is no default assumption that every room should have sunlight..
I'm an MP design engineer in the buildings industry and I'm really hoping to work on one of these office space to apartment projects someday. It would be a serious challenge to figure out out those systems, but I would be so motivated.
Yes! Your passion is a inspiration!
Lotta Lofts
Most of us don’t need luxury apartments!. How about converting some of them for low income rather than just sitting empty. Many of us would even be grateful for pods with shared bathrooms.
Hey Anne! This will probably also happen in some conversions as it is less effort.
But not profitable
Oh cool, Calgary is mentioned! I'm so happy they moved quickly to help transform the buildings. There was about a year near the start of Covid that I was the noisy wheel in the city trying to get the grease of transforming the office towers to residential. It's surpassed my wildest expectations. Calgary remains an awesome city! Just hope we can stop building so much low density car oriented developments. It's nowhere near as bad as a median US city, but it still could be better with more intensification within existing communities.
Fantastic. You are a good citizen. I really want to see this become widespread across the country. We need to demand these changes from our municipal governments. I hope your work and the model of Calgary will inspire best practices all over North America. It takes a switch in mindset and adjustment of bylaws, but it needs shaking up.
A few big hurdles to convert office to apartment that I can think of
- office buildings typically have curtain wall which can't be opened
- bathroom
- apartment needs to be fire compartmented from each other
- office building may not have enough exit staircase when convert to apartment
I work with this and I'll tell you the biggest problem is actually the fact office buildings are much "fatter", as in, they have spaces that can be 10 meters or more away from a window
But workarounds are doable. Investors need to be aware in many cases it's impossible to squeeze as many bedrooms etc in the same area as a new construction because of this. Not enough window width / area
curtain wall isint really a problem, itll be like a skyscraper kinda and also it would kinda suck to ruin the exterior character of the architecture by opening it up (also some smaller suburban office parks around 4-6 stories tall encompass openable windows). its a lto better to convert these buildings than to just waste 70 years of architecture because the urban planning around it was bad
I live in a large city and have watched many downtown office buildings being converted into housing. I wondered why it sometimes took a very long time to complete those projects. I hadn't thought about things like access to elevators and the like. Thanks for answering some questions I had about those conversions.
[edit] Forgot to mention I live in a converted city hall building, originally built over a hundred years ago. I love the spectacular architecture and construction details they were able to retain (terrazzo floors, cast iron details, etc.) They cordoned off each floor almost with a rabbit warren like maze, not sure what was going on there, but most apartment entrances are 'hidden' down a short L-shaped corridor, or around a bend, rather than all the doors being lined up like dominoes along a long central hall. Some apartments wound up with two floors, one has a third floor in the old clock tower.
Mixed use seems the most practical conversion. Nice units on the ends with windows, stores, offices, restaurants, fitness centers, and daycares in the center. A true live-work space in the city would be amazing. You could leave your unit, drop the kids into daycare, then go get some work done in an office space.
Calgary AB, Canada. Our pervious mayor, Nenshi understood the reasons behind the housing crisis . Things he was able to do during his tenure. Ended R1 only zoning in all new neighborhoods. now when I go into new areas I see a more healthy mix of housing. Low rise condo's, townhouses, as well as single detached houses. Basement suites can be developed with just a building permit, no rezoning needed, this applies to new developments after 2015. He also started a program to redeveloped office buildings into apartment buildings. offering expedited permits and tax breaks. To date two conversions are complete, and several more are in the planning stages.
I actually work as an architect in a company called Citas that is doing this in São Paulo downtown.
The city hall has a lot of incentives for this and created a program that's called "Requalifica Centro" and it includes up to 3 years of tax isemption after people start living in the building.
The area desperately needs more housing, there is a lot of abandoned buildings that owe more in taxes than they are worth. Meanwhile, some people get up to 3 hours of public transportation to get downtown and 3 hours to get back home.
We have done quite a bit of this here in Pittsburgh. Several vacant/old office buildings have been turned into apartments, with a few bring turned into hotels. That being said, there are still several luxury new builds going up around the city.
This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing both the benefits and challenges of projects like these!
I've personally worked with a developer on some planning for an office to apartments conversion... it's doable, but at least around here it requires the eventual rents to be be pretty high to cover construction and other capital costs.
Yeah it's pretty hard to do this and be affordable at the same time. No one wants to pay luxury apartment level prices for living in a space that wasn't designed even for private bathrooms with no guarantee of light.
For offices that aren't vacant, convert a portion of their parking lots to building affordable rentals. Give priority to employees that have long commutes or low incomes. Rentals by default should not have parking space. Occupants can save $10K per year not owning a car.
Especially if they are connected to rapid transit...
...They should by default have parking spaces. Not everywhere/everyone is lucky enough to have adequate mobility/affordable/transportation.
@@stickynorth Rapid transit is desirable. However since those that live very near work don't need cars for commuting, their need for transport is down to 1%. They can rent vehicles, and share a small pool of bikes. Support services such as daycare, restaurants and shops should be part of these 5 minute communities.
What right do you think you have to dictate what kind of transportation people take with their own money
@@stillfitz9749 Many cities are in a housing crisis. Land is finite, especially in city centres. Given apartment buildings are multistory, each parking space could be equivalent to a 1 modest apartment. Even if, as a city planner, the only thing you care about is maximising economic output per square foot, parking spaces for commuters don't make sense. Plus, each car means more congestion and poorer air quality.
A lot of down town office buildings in my city are being converted to living spaces. I happen to live in a historic landmark building that is now very nice apartments. I am too old for the inner city loft living that I always wanted during my married years. this serves me in my old age with many of the things I wanted
Maybe you should fight against the monopoly of the apartment owning companies? at least in Berlin, Germany
Why fight it when you can also play it? 😂 8:08
ALL buildings should by law be mixed use or mixed-use capable so that they can be quickly and easily converted when the demand of one sector falls and another one rises. Also the solution when converting isn't to swap them into luxury apartments. That just makes the problem worse. You need to make each unit small, tiny and affordable so it can attract a maximum economic pool of potential renters/owners... Studio units between 160-500 sq ft are very reasonable in most places worldwide...
The ideal approach would be to design buildings so a floor can be easily altered to anything from one huge open space with a few support pillars to a hundred small apartments/offices, then switch things up as the need arises. Maybe lay things out on a 5*5m grid, where each cell has drainage, water, power and communications points below floor level. A small apartment could fill two cells. One cell containing the bedroom and bathroom, the other the kitchen/living room (probably with some overlap into the other cell, depending on the exact layout).
Affordability and efficient design are definitely important, but you've got to have some apartments for familes too.
That would be difficult to do. The reason they are converted into luxury apartments is that bigger apartments mean less plumbing & electrical is required as there is a smaller number of bathrooms & kitchens per floor than there would be for smaller apartments. Although maybe another option would be to convert some of them into student accommodation where shared bathrooms & kitchens are acceptable, rather than having a full kitchen & bathroom in each apartment, thus allowing for more apartments per floor without the associated complexity of the extra plumbing & electrical.
And if you would live and work in the same building: less transportation emissions? 🧐 What could possible impact the rent rate is that - according to Gensler - conversion can be 30% cheaper that building a new construction. 🔗 www.gensler.com/blog/what-we-learned-assessing-office-to-residential-conversions
C’est sûrement une raisonnable et bonne solution pour l’état actuel de nos sociétés si déjà cela se réalisait sans tergiverser, ce qui ne semble pas être massivement d’actualité. Même si certaines réalisations sont encourageantes, elles semblent bien timides.
Pour après demain, lorsque nos besoins d’approvisionnement en nourriture, faute d’énergies pour la transporter jusqu’aux villes, sera alors notre quotidien, alors il faudra privilégier l’habitat au plus près de la nourriture: la terre et ses fruits, et sûrement moins d’élevages animaux en conséquences, aussi. Les plans dont vous parlez seront déjà obsolètes car leurs réalisations va prendre des décennies pour être efficaces . Et à ce moment là ce ne sera plus viable…Notre environnement ne sera plus du tout le même.C’est cela qui risque de toucher nos jeunes générations actuelles , malheureusement 😢
Je voudrais pouvoir être plus optimiste, mais « mieux vaut prévenir que guérir »
It'll be interesting to see if rents actually go down in areas with more converted offices
Gonna be turned into “luxury” apartments and keep sitting empty bc too unaffordable
Well there's an easy fix for fitting in a lot of rooms with natural lighting.
Long apartments, note, not studio apartments.
The only window is the bedroom, so how does the living room get light?
There are many many ways of accomplishing this same idea, but ultimately the wall that separates the bedroom and living room just has a way to allow light through it, but also remain shut when wanted. This could be a halfwall with an entire slideable or folding section to open the other half. This could be glass walls with curtains. This could be standard walls with indoor shutter "windows". The best part is that halfwalls come with their own utility. If someone never wants to shut their bedroom-living room wall, then now they have an additional shelf space being the wall itself.
So your front door is where the bathroom is. Your kitchen and living room are right after. You probably have some cupboards in the opposite wall to where your bathroom and kitchen are, and then at the back is your bedroom. No natural lighting to your apartment unless you open the wall separating the bed and living room.
Additionally, you can butterfly flip this layout as needed. So if layout d has entrance in the bottom corner of the d and bathroom and kitchen on the left, then b is entrance on the left and bathroom/kitchen on the right, so a hallway connecting apartments such as dbdbdbdb would allow you to not only place 8 apartments on one side of a building all with natural lighting, but also would only consist of 4 specific plumbing points, as for each db combo, all four points of two bathrooms and two kitchens are right next to each other.
And it's worth mentioning that these concepts aren't new. Similar things are done with luxury caravans due to their limited space and side sections being taken up by other more important things than light such as kitchenettes and bathrooms. The light can only come in from the front and back, and minimally from the sides, which means light passing over the bed space to light the middle.
New York City has converted many office buildings in the financial district to apartments and condos. Wholefoods, Target and other brand names stores have opened. It took some time to convert the downtown into an area suitable for families but it is thriving and becoming more of a neighborhood where people live and work then just a business district.
I’d love to see Downtown LA get aggressive with retrofitting older office buildings into condos…
They already do. What do you think the historic core is made out of? I lived in one of those buildings, and let me tell you it sucked. Their idea of complying with the window requirements was to scoop the center out of the building so that the interior apartments had a window, but it never got any light. I would have almost gotten more use out of extra square footage than that pathetic attempt at an outside window.
Part of the problem is that people who have been homeless for a while are assumed to deserve to be homeless. They figure we must be irresponsible drug users who should be punished.
I'm 70, disabled, and homeless since 2016. The apartment I lived in for 17 years was sold, and the rent tripled. I've lived in horrid, corrupt bed bugged boardinghouses, and horrible nursinghomes. I'm costing the state 3x more to be in a nursing warehouse than if there were rent assistance. I've gotten SO much weaker than ever before, because I can't get the right nutrition, Rxs, or sleep. I took care of myself for 50 years, and all I want is a room where the state doesn't dictate my neglect. I can't find even a rundown efficiency apt for less than my whole Social Security check, and low-income housing, for disabled and seniors has had the waiting lists Closed for Years.
I do get a little nervous when you say that you don't want it to be easy to tear down an old building to replace it... because in a lot of circumstances, that is probably the best way forward. An abandoned big box store surrounded by a parking lot is such bad space use that refurbishing that big box store into anything else is still going to have horrible space use that will offset any gains from repurposing instead of rebuilding.
Edmonton Canada started this about 25 hears ago. Nice to see other cities catching up.
Is a bathroom for each unit a luxury now? Damn, what time we live in.
Hey there! Our reporter meant this ironically to show how much effort is needed to provide "normal" flats with a private bathroom.😄 Obviously, it is still a luxury when we compare it to a lot of people globally who only have access to basic sanitation. But in most cities where office conversion is a thing, the "norm" are non-shared bathrooms.
I live in re-developed office tower right in the heart of KCMo. I love my bit of city in a sprawled out metro. While it says it’s affordable housing, though, I need a pretty high wage to handle the rent.
My daughter is what I call a trail blazer as well, because she lives with me in the city, and goes to school just down the street in a few old office buildings that were converted to a school and are connected with a skywalk. It’s pretty cool how inside looks like a modern office inside until you walk into what looks like an office to then see it transform into a classroom.
I wish there were more people who understood the burbs aren’t always the best life for kids so she’d have more friends in walking distance to play with. 1 more year and the streetcar extension will take her down the street to where many of her school’s friends live now, though, so we’re looking forward to that.
KCMO is an investors hot spot right now, which probably explains the not so inexpensive rental costs.
Does every office have to be converted into a modern concept of a home though? What about large open concept style homes, that look like those luxury lofts, and artists lofts, from TV shows? Then you don't need to worry about separate rooms in the back. And what about some floors are apartments, and others are community space, or cafes, near the windows, and laundry rooms, storage space, etc., closer to the elevators?
Thank you for doing the pros and cons of this idea. Its important that every idea is not a solve all and we need a bunch of ideas to actually fix things.
Probably going to see a bunch of this out of Edmonton too if it hasn't started already. There's been a lot of zoning changes going on, and pushes towards denser living & urban redevelopment.
Do you mean North London?
@@netayconnection6236 Nah, the one in Canada.
Old outdated zoning laws are a significant impediment to creative solutions.
The problem is affordable housing….
The house in the vacant office will be luxury house…. So it won’t resolve anything
FINALLY! I have been talking about the need to do it for years! Empty offices looked totally ghostly, and at the same time young people could not afford even a little studio flat. Glad, that somebody was smart enough to start solving this issue.
Some office space could go residential. But, ...
We have to make it HARD for business to build low rise offices in the suburbs and exburbs, DESTROYING big big lots of PRECIOUS farm and wood land (especially in the USA, but all of europe too) ... so that they will seek existing Office buildings space. Big companies save money but buying far away land, close to a highway... and Expanding EXPONENTIALY the use of gas and the emissions of CO2 and global warming: first emiter: car. What emissions are expanding? Cars, with expanding distances, growing suburbs, jobs far away, new highways ...
THis land should go to Housing for those who want to live There.
Lets make cities more balanced. Office here, AND there. Residential here AND there.
In Europe, most of Office jobs are NOT in city centers, and medium to tall buildings are rare. Residential is always important, but people need to work and commute there. And commute is the biggest problem of all, for lungs deseases and more (pollution causes stress, mental disorders etc.), and global warming.
I wonder if a natural daylight lighting system that makes use of fibre optic cables for daylight transportation has been incorporated yet in a retrofitted office tower. 🤔
Here in Den Bosch, in the south of Holland, there are more and more shops in the city center which are converted into living spaces.
I live in the second biggest small city in Tasmania, Australia, where some shopping area conversions are occurring in the attractive Victorian city heritage multi storey buildings into residential units right in the attractice cityscape.
I'm from Johannesburg, South Africa, where these sort of conversations are quite popular. The city centre used to be the ideal home for many of business HQs and government offices until they started moving toward Sandton and the greater north of Johannesburg. As a result a lot of office buildings were left behind and various property management companies have taken them over and converted them to housing. It has worked remarkably well because the housing there is quite affordable and because you are in the city centre it is easy to get to work for most people.
Not an office building, but my hubby and I lived for a while in a converted hospital. It was a little creepy at times, and the apartments were a bit quirky, but it was a liveable space, and cheap to boot!
Of they make office spaces into housing, they'll make them into housing that costs FAR TOO MUCH for the average person.
As long as there's greedy landlords & real estate gents, nothing will change.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
You help us learn and give people like me some hope. Thank you so much.
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I used to be homeless, I promise I'd have picked sharing communal restrooms on one floor with dividers like fanciers locker rooms than have been curled up on the pavement hoping I didn't get robbed.
Property owners are the problem.
Your hard work and dedication shine through. 💪
Good to see Melbourne included in the list. You should've expanded on this as our city has 5.3 million residents 🇦🇺
here in my hometown theyve started converting the old post office in the middle of town into.... luxery appartments, which is kind of a low blow bc not a lot of us here can afford that. and this is a conversion where indeed most of the structure had to be taken out, currently only its skeleton stands. same for the big appartment store further down the street, only its skeleton remains, but if memory serves me right, these will me social rentals, so thats much better, and the ground floor will be smaller shops, hopefully breathing new live into hour town.
there are plenty of buildings still around that can be converted here, there also plenty of buildings that have been torn down (my elementry school included, which now jsut a small fenced in grassfield)
If you look at assisted living facilities and hospitals, the idea of communal kitchens, open halls and sitting areas near the elevators is actually really desirable if its designed for in an attractive way and the building has a certain amount of staff to maintain those public spaces. Especially if the staff are themselves residents.
My father’s high school was converted into senior-living flats. Marvelous 1890s local stone structure w large windows n wide halls. Very successful project on city’s high street.
One thing that could be done to help things in the future is to make it more difficult to create office buildings that are difficult to convert. Work from home is only going to become more and more popular, so we need to consider that in 30-50 years the office buildings that are now being constructed might end up empty. So maybe no more of these giant square boxes where a large part of the floorspace has no natural lighting, so instead of construction companies building one giant square box, they instead build two smaller rectangular boxes instead
all the nice looking offices are already built anyway, 1970s-90s architecture was a hell of a lot less boxier than 50s/60s and 2010s/2020s designs, also a lot of those older 70s-90s offices have absolutely massive skylights and beautiful fun postmodern interior spaces
It’s not super easy to convert office to residential due to the trash/plumbing modifications needed. Costs are significant, especially considering the building exists already, you’d think it is easy but it isn’t
They've been doing this in Detroit for almost 10 years. They've been renovating warehouses and office buildings. Unfortunately it doesn't work because all of these homes are luxury condos/apartments and most people can't afford them.
I worked on the conversion of an entire office building into residential in Auckland. It was great to see.
You did not mention rent on purpose? Atleast where I live office rent is much higher then residential rent. Converting an office building in to an apartment building would mean less income per square meter. We have a unique system for residental rents in Sweden maybe it's just here.
I do not know the quota. Nevertheless it would not surprise me if 20% vacancy in an office building is more profitable then if it was 100% full with residental apartments.
The difference is between a reduced rent and no rent. I'd prefer the former if I had an empty office block providing no income.
It is not 0% or 100% which I believe you understand but choose to missinterpret. The building I live in have offices in the groundfloor. Their rent is roughly 3 times the residential rent per square meter. My guess is that it is an extreme situation and not representitive for the whole city. Still the rent for commercial space might be doubble that of residential.
You could have half the building emtpy dealing with half the ammount of annoying tenants compared to a full residential building. Don't have to reconstruct the building and still have the same income.
It is in Swedne which have a highyl regulated residential market. Don't know if it applies to other countries but I think it was a consious choice to not mention that aspect in the video.@@PLuMUK54
You can use the 80% of empty spaces as rent generating housing rentals.
Converting empty offices into housing could be a win-win solution for the surplus of office space and housing crises. However, it's crucial to consider factors like zoning laws, infrastructure needs, location suitability, and community engagement. This approach may be more environmentally friendly than new construction but requires careful planning and collaboration between stakeholders. Overall, it's a promising idea with potential benefits for both urban development and housing challenges. #OfficeConversion #HousingCrisis #Sustainability
Finland/capital city area.
In my country it's going the opposite way 🙁 Appartments are being turned into offices (or hotels) at the central most areas in big cities. It doesn't seem many people are realising it's killing the life there. Instead many think it should be easier to drive and park your car in the centre so there will be more people shopping...
Old offices and factory buildings at the outskirts of cities are being turned into either luxury apartments OR super tiny one room appartments because the rent/price per square is always higher in small apartments.
Also new apartments are really terrible. Long and narrow, no separate kitchen, just cabinets on one wall, really small rooms. The number of bedrooms pushes up the price so they just try to fit as many as possible into as small a space possible.
As someone who loves communal ways of living all of this is especially sad. Older houses were/are great for shared living, but those are turned into offices and the new ones just don't work.
Hey there! Sorry to hear that. Hopefully there will be an improvement in the housing situation at some point ✨
I live in an apartment building that started out as a factory in the 1800's and was used as office space up to the 20-teens.
A downside is that there are only windows on one side of the apartment.
We do have one of those columns that they had to build around in the kitchen.
nother good video from DW . quality and Information are top notch
They should have turned offices into hostel style accommodations like shared bathroom/washroom/kitchen (this will save a lot of rebuilding/reconsturction). It's not ideal but way better than people going homeless. Less ideal living environment also means it's more affordable living option.
Another idea is when building new towers they are designed for both the office and living space options so when you choose turn office Into housing or reverse the basic instruction for is there already, maybe even allows mix use of housing and office floors in same building or mix in same floor, so you can having housing on every odd floor and office for every even floor, you can. A semi modular building designed for office and housing maybe even other. Types of buildings such as in building playground floors or other stuff all using the same base building designed. In the long run lower the cost when converting the floor type to another floor type
My city is currently doing several conversion projects (I think about eight offices are being converted right now) while there's a few that have already been converted. It is quicker than a new development, and because the old buildings were built better than the newer developments, they can withstand the renos much better and last longer.
The problem is, they can cost almost as much, if not more, as market units do. The first completed one in my city lists their 1BRs claims their range is just under market, but the only available units are $300 more while another, a hotel turned into apartments, charges $400/month higher than the average. And hotel rooms are small, especially when you add a kitchenette and say it's a suite.
Conversion is a great idea but if the point is to make housing more affordable, it needs to be closely monitored.
This suggests that building codes should ensure convertibility.
Simple - Greedy landlords are the cause of it.
Office capacity in my city is also underutilized. Now I’m imagining my company’s office building as housing given the long distance between windows on either side and I see why this is a real challenge for so many reasons. I hope some creative architects can come up with strategies and solutions.
I live in a smaller city north-east of Seattle which is feeling pressure from population growth triggered by people LEAVING Seattle. What this town has done is build 3-4 floor buildings with office or small retail space on the ground floor and apartments above.
Urban mixed use is being built all over the USA
It don't work..... ventilation... toilets... air-conditioning.... cost a lot to convert
That's what research is for
That's why you research which buildings can be converted.
Some of the newer construction studio/1 BR apartments in Seattle only have outside windows in the living area, with a 3/4 wall to the adjacent bedroom to let in light. Kitchenettes are minimal and are often set up linearly along the inside wall. There is usually a larger shared kitchen available for cooking. Some just opt to eat takeout a lot. Bathroom is on entry wall, though could be shared in the case of social or dorm housing.
My city Mumbai has offices in residential space because they cannot afford the commercial space. This pushes out the residents and makes residential spaces even more expensive since people wanting to live cannot compete with a business for the same space.
One the biggest office building in our financial district was bought to convert into apartments. I really hopes it's a success because there are A LOT of empty offices in Montreal that could be converted into housing. Like you said, it won't fix the current crisis but it will definitely start to shift things in a better direction.
It's cool to see that the areas in Frankfurt led to mixed use. I can also see this leading to a greater use of public transport if people can live in downtown areas where a lot of public transport already serves.
Had this idea as shelters not homes per se. Nice to see others have better ideas
I haven't heard of it in Melbourne, but I could see it being successful, if suitable buildings can be found. We don't have a good history of reusing buildings here.
Just changing the codes in office complexes could help. There is a half empty office bldg near me, it even has a lap pool in the backyard for tenants (near San Diego, so year round). A 350 SF office could easily house a singleton, there are bathrooms right down the hallway and a Planet Fitness within walking distance for exercise and showers. If it's safe to occupy during the day, it's safe to occupy in the evenings and overnight, right?
Great vid, well researched
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Top Notch video dude!
if i remember correct, downtown rent keep increasing, even when its high vacant location, landlord dont wanna lower rent, they keep the trend of making business owner leaving. make it like a ghost town in downtown.
but its understandable since dollar value is dropping. and government only allow 2.5% annual increase rate. many old tenant pay a lot less than newcomer
Great video DW! I loved it.
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4:37
That's always the issue, when it comes to improvisation.
You have to understand what you have to work with. Picture the result in your mind. And then know what techniques and materials can help you get the finished product.
I live in Calgary. I think what they're doing is wonderful
The amount of resources that would need to be used to convert American office buildings into residential units would be much larger then leveling the building and starting from scratch. We are talking about going into a standing building, adding in water and sewer lines, electrical, firewalls, and so on. There may be a few buildings in the US that this can be done with, but it’s incredibly unlikely this is going to happen. It would also give you more downtown expensive apartments that this country doesn’t need more of. We need cheaper housing, not $5k a month rentals.
3:18 Frankfurt re-development. Adaptive reuse a tricky proposition for a number of reasons: converting plumbing, HVAC, daylighting, power, poss. asbestos remediation 5:26 Steven Paynter building suitability evaluation algorithm. 8:52 cutting red tape: Calgary
I think we should also look at usibg this space as a aeroponic vertical farm, this shoild reduce food prices and increase the quality of the food, these savibgs and benifits will help in more ways than just housing (which also needs to be fixed but requires much more retrofitting)
This is happening in Columbus, Ohio. Office buildings are being converted into apartments, in new hi-rise buildings. The new apartments are extremely expensive, driven by location. These new offices were built approx. 5 years ago and replaced older office buildings that were only 5 stories tall. The pandemic immediately made the new hi-rise offices, obsolete, as the office workers decided to work from their homes, located outside of the downtown.
Just for future reference, it's happening in the small communities too, where I live the numbers keep rising, Jackson County Oregon
I'd be happy with a 10 by 10 apparently with shared bathroom it would be better than a tent or the sheds being called housing
The principle problem with converting offices (likewise offices into hotels) is the lack of plumbing and electrical services. You can run new electrical if the building was designed as a proper office in the 90's, but if it's older than that, it was built during a time before computers, and thus has a lack of electrical capacity to actually operate appliances (but not insurmountable.) If the office had a data center, there's your ability to have a stove or laundry room for the floor.
Converting an office building thus, best converts into a type of housing that has shared bathroom/kitchen spaces. Because that's all the plumbing was designed to have. However that is not the housing that is demand. The "3 bedroom"/"4 bedroom" large units are the ones missing from cities, because all that's been built for 20 years are rubbish fake "luxury" 1-bed/2-bed units that are under-sized and full of "flex/den" spaces that are marketed as being usable bedrooms or offices, but are sold under the pretense they are large bedrooms that a queen size bed would fit in, when they aren't suitable as a bedroom at all due to the lack of windows.
The solution really is to not try and carve up the floor space into multiple units and instead try to make each floor only one or two units as to not have to waste space on hallways. That minimizes the amount of plumbing that actually needs to exist, as a typical office building had enough plumbing capacity for two bathrooms and two break rooms per floor. Sure, that means you can't rent as many units, but then you also don't have have to deal with all the extra renovations needed to make them smaller.
Thanks for subtitling instead of dubbing this video. Since I'm not really proficient in german, it's nice to be able to practice my listening and learn new vocabulary.
This was done in the Netherlands since 2013 and now both offices and houses are scarce.
corruption is the biggest barrier. approval usually involved bribes. when city councilors don't see how to get money from a project they are short on incentive.
Here in Charleston, WV, at least three office buildings downtown have been or are being converted into housing.
Short answer: The infrastructural and design needs of an apartment building are substantially different from those of an office building, and the cost of full conversion would exceed that of bulldozing and building a whole new building.
Long Answer:
1. Lack of water, gas, drainage and ventilation piping / ductwork throughout the building.
2. Insufficient underground trunk-line capacity to handle the water / wastewater drainage needs of so many new kitchens, showers, and the residents using them.
-- 2a. This capacity cannot be retrofitted under existing buildings without digging / trenching; that means bulldozing the whole building.
3. Not enough exterior windows for emergency egress requirements, written into building codes. You can't legally have apartments in the interior of office buildings because each bedroom must have at least one window, suitable for use in emergency evacuation.
Vancouver , Canada needs to do this
They kind of did this in my village except they turned it into a hotel. The retail spaces were brand new but vacant for over 10 years. The ceilings are a bit strange that you can see all the pipes and ducts.
Sounds really interesting! What is the name of the hotel? We would love to look it up and find out more 🤓
@@DWPlanetA Steveston Waterfront Hotel
Also wanted to add when we went in to take a look, you completely lose your cell signal inside the buildings, on top of the rents being very expensive, I can see why they had trouble renting them out if a business can't make a phone call inside.
6:51 what about mixed use buildings? Residential/commercial space?The now window areas can be storage space or something
The best way to plan the future could indeed be not to plan anything for single use only. It could be that zoning regulations and demand in the area impact to the decision of conversion in the end. 🏢