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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
Last night as I was walking home, I came across the recently completed Yonge + Rich condominiums at Richmond and Victoria (I think they won awards for this name back in the day). I stopped to look up because I was curious about one particular detail -- the elbows.
This tower is, in effect, two towers that are attached in middle. And the differing facade treatments are meant to reinforce this: two towers, not one.
But because they are in fact connected, there are some unavoidable 90 degree angles in the floor plates. These spaces can be extremely tricky when it comes to laying out residential suites because they skew your ratio of square footage to vision glass. Usually you get too much of the former relative to the latter. You can also get awkward facing / privacy conditions.
And so these spaces are often referred to in the industry as the "elbow" suites or sometimes the "armpit" suites. Though I think elbows are a lot nicer than armpits.
Here's the Yonge + Rich example to illustrate what I'm talking about:
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
Last night as I was walking home, I came across the recently completed Yonge + Rich condominiums at Richmond and Victoria (I think they won awards for this name back in the day). I stopped to look up because I was curious about one particular detail -- the elbows.
This tower is, in effect, two towers that are attached in middle. And the differing facade treatments are meant to reinforce this: two towers, not one.
But because they are in fact connected, there are some unavoidable 90 degree angles in the floor plates. These spaces can be extremely tricky when it comes to laying out residential suites because they skew your ratio of square footage to vision glass. Usually you get too much of the former relative to the latter. You can also get awkward facing / privacy conditions.
And so these spaces are often referred to in the industry as the "elbow" suites or sometimes the "armpit" suites. Though I think elbows are a lot nicer than armpits.
Here's the Yonge + Rich example to illustrate what I'm talking about:
In this case, the entire stack is comprised of frosted translucent glass. So it is pretty clear that these spaces are not residential suites. Here's the floor plate:
What was done here was to make it circulation/corridor space. This solves the elbow suite problem and adds a nice feature to each floor. These days, very few corridors have natural light. Vision glass is too precious of a commodity. You could argue that it should have been clear glass, but presumably frosted glass was used to avoid privacy concerns.
The other trade-off that needs to be considered is that of efficiency. What is the ratio of saleable/rentable area to gross construction area? Adding circulation space lowers this number. So it can come down to whether it is better to have a higher efficiency with some elbows, or a lower efficiency with no elbows.
Every building is a prototype, isn't it?
In this case, the entire stack is comprised of frosted translucent glass. So it is pretty clear that these spaces are not residential suites. Here's the floor plate:
What was done here was to make it circulation/corridor space. This solves the elbow suite problem and adds a nice feature to each floor. These days, very few corridors have natural light. Vision glass is too precious of a commodity. You could argue that it should have been clear glass, but presumably frosted glass was used to avoid privacy concerns.
The other trade-off that needs to be considered is that of efficiency. What is the ratio of saleable/rentable area to gross construction area? Adding circulation space lowers this number. So it can come down to whether it is better to have a higher efficiency with some elbows, or a lower efficiency with no elbows.
Every building is a prototype, isn't it?
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