Now that phones work on the subway (here in Toronto), I sometimes find myself having to take calls while in transit. And one of the things it has made me realize is that the subway is a very noisy place. It's not a suitable place for calls.

But interestingly enough, I only really realized this once I started taking calls and once I wanted it to be quiet. Before that, it was just the sounds of the subway and it was perfectly fine from an auditory perspective. And that's maybe the thing about noise in the city: it's relative, and it depends on your expectations.

Here's an excerpt from a recent article in the Atlantic by Xochitl Gonzalez that refers to urban silence as "the sound of gentrification":

Attempts to regulate the sounds of the city (car horns, ice-cream-truck jingles) continued throughout the 20th century, but they took a turn for the personal in the ’90s. The city [of New York] started going after boom boxes, car stereos, and nightclubs. These were certainly noisy, but were they nuisances? Not to the people who enjoyed them.

And here's another quote that directly speaks to its relativeness:

In the years that followed, many of New York’s nightclubs migrated to Brooklyn, which remains loud and proud. An analysis of 2019 data ranked it as the loudest borough in New York. It earned this distinction by racking up the most noise complaints to 311—the city complaint hotline. Which raises the question: Was it the noisiest borough? Or was it just home to the densest mix of loud people and people who wanted to control those loud people?

Urban noise is obviously an important consideration. If you have to get up for work at 5 AM and someone or something is keeping you up, that is going to be supremely annoying. But if you're looking for something fun to do, then a noisy Brooklyn nightclub could be the cacophony of sounds that you're after.

When I first heard about the issue that we spoke about in yesterday's post, my mind immediately went to noise. I thought, "That must be it. Well-caffeinated coffee drinkers are disrupting the rest of the neighborhood!" I have no idea if that's actually a problem in this particular case, but it's often a thing.

According to Xochitl Gonzalez, rich people love quiet. Do you agree?

Studio Libeskind has a recently completed project in Brooklyn that looks like it was designed by Studio Libeskind. It has angled facades and, judging by the comments on Dezeen, its design is polarizing. But it is an affordable housing project for seniors, and it does have a large atrium in the middle of it.

Atria are a bit of a unique feature in multi-family housing (at least in this part of the world). For better or for worse, the gold standard has become the double-loaded corridor. And that's because it's "efficient." It helps you maximize the amount of rentable or saleable area to gross construction area.

Here in Toronto, a typical efficiency -- calculated as the net saleable/rentable area divided by the gross construction area -- would be somewhere between 75-80%. Though many factors can affect this percentage, such as the amount of amenity space in the building.

There is certainly the option of just building a less efficient building, but then it means you'll likely need to increase the price of the homes to compensate for this loss in efficiency.

This is the trade-off that is often made with smaller suites. More and smaller suites usually translate into more corridor space (i.e. a lower overall efficiency). But it may make sense to do this if you think your smaller suites will generate more revenue on a per square foot basis.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of two residential building in Toronto with an atrium. And that's 71 Front Street East in the St. Lawrence and "The Atrium" at 650 Queens Quay West. The latter is pretty neat inside. The last time I checked, it even had fake palms.

In the case of both The Atrium and Libeskind's Brooklyn project, the atria result in single-loaded corridors. (I'm not sure how 71 Front was designed.) Here's what Libeskind's project looks like:

The obvious advantage of this condition is that you get natural light into the corridors, whereas with a typical double-loaded corridor you don't. But again, the disadvantage of this design is that you only have apartments on one side, instead of both sides.

In this case, the thermal envelope of the building is the outside face of each corridor (atrium side). This means the corridors are interior or conditioned spaces.

Another option would be to create open-air corridors, like in this example from Montreal. This creates corridors exposed to the elements, but now you've reduced your overall energy consumption (less space to heat/cool) and you've created the possibility of double-aspect units.

Personally, I'm a fan of atria and courtyards in residential buildings. But for the reasons we just talked about, they're not that common. My sense is that they're far more common in commercial buildings. John Portman, for instance, made a name for himself designing and developing hotels around them.

What are your thoughts, though? Would you pay a premium to live in a residential building with a nice atrium? I bet some of you would if it meant an improved suite design, such as more windows and more natural light.

Photos: Hufton + Crow

Here's the thing:

Nationwide, the biggest single source of emissions is transportation, dominated by low-occupancy cars and trucks. But in New York, most people use mass transit instead of driving. That means buildings “are by far the largest source” of climate pollution in the city, said Christopher Halfnight, senior director of research and policy at the Urban Green Council, a nonprofit focused on energy efficiency in buildings. Gas- and oil-burning furnaces and water heaters are together responsible for 40% of NYC emissions, according to Halfnight.

In response to this, New York City has been passing laws that restrict greenhouse gases and that by and large incentivize electrification. One of these is Local Law 97, which will generally require buildings over 25,000 sf to reduce their GHG emissions by 40% (relative to 2005) by 2030.

Already the market is responding. Alloy Development has just completed the city's first all-electric tower at 505 State Street in Brooklyn. Tenants began moving in on April 5.

When team members asked what the complex would look like absent gas, the answers were fairly straightforward. “Instead of a gas boiler, an electric boiler; instead of a gas cooktop, it was an induction cooktop. And literally that was it,” said Pires, noting that they had to revise the design of the electrical room to allow for higher amperage, since more incoming electricity would be needed for a larger electrical load.

Some, or perhaps many, in the industry are fighting these new laws. In 2022, a co-op in Queens apparently went to the New York Supreme Court. But directionally, this certainly looks to be where we are headed. So you can either fight it, or you can try and get ahead of it, as Alloy has done here.

For more information on 505 State Street, go here (Bloomberg) and here (project website).