Why Don’t We Convert More Empty Office Buildings to Residential?

Great video, Betty!

Someone needs to create a video showing whether it is feasible to convert an office building to AFFORDABLE residental homes.

In my country,they converted a hotel in residencial apartments and is a nightmare.

There is an interesting predicament where i live in Perth, western Australia. There are many heritage listed arcades (as in...old school shopping malls) in the city centre that were booming 15 years ago and now sit empty. The heritage listing means rhey can't be bulldozed, and having seen the crap they build nowadays thats a good thing. Because these arcades are SPECTACULAR. These will surely be better as housing than empty.

I love the conclusion at the end, I’ve seen others with experience say most buildings aren’t suitable for conversion and would just be better rebuilt entirely (but most say 1-10%, not 20-40%!) so I love how you’ve pointed out that 20-40% is still a huge amount of housing and revitalisation of downtown areas that’s possible and feasible and still easier than tearing down and rebuilding. I also definitely thought that about Boston when I visited, though some parts of Cambridge and, uh, it was a bit right next to it on the red line… Somerville? Well anyway, they definitely had noticeably bigger distances between homes and wider roads than in Europe. But they were much less so than anywhere else, even relatively nearby New York State or New Jersey suburbia had absolutely massive setbacks by comparison — and I’m told those are actually quite close together compared to some modern midwestern suburbs?? 😱

It has to be AFFORDABLE housing, too! If it's just 'more apartments' but with *shitty, absurd prices*, you're only tackling, at best, PART of the problem. Even if a bunch of these office buildings are "fairly-quickly converted to apartments", in THEORY, this might "drive average rent costs down a bit" but... by how much, esp. in a city with a high COL like New York anyhow?? probably not a whole lot, in the grand scheme of things...

What about mixed use? Instead of making the entire floor into residential units, mix commercial or other uses in. The different regulations could allow for more ways to fill the floor and different shapes within the floorplan. . To use an example look at 4:12. Cut each of the side units in half and pair them together with a neighbor. This makes half as many residential units on the sides, but opens the center of the building for...a grocery store. I understand one floor like this would be too small for a store that serves the people in the building, but this is a skyscraper and the different store departments could be split between various floors.

Another fantastic video! Thanks for posting.

Very good video. Lots of valuable info.

Always excited to see a new articulations video

So many people i know work so hard yet can barely afford the most basic cost of living.. It baffles me. Even tho Society is struggling, We are yet to even attempt to implement a concept around: "The better off the lowest income people are doing; The better off the rest of the economy could be doing." -Think of it like a ecosystem in nature. The littlest things might seem insignificant yet, if they crumbled away, the entire ecosystem could crumble. *(Think of this but as a analogy for our economy and our modern day society..) If we instead decided to support the lowest people in the ecosystem, there would be a beneficial dispersion towards other aspects of the society benefiting. All because the lowest people would be doing better (I say better but I really mean: Able to obtain the most basic living standards..) Yet even that would Vastly improve our current state of our economy & society *Also imagine this analogy in our economy. The more help we invest in the lowest level people, the more it would trickle into every facet of our economy. If poor people can pay their rent & not go homeless: landlords would get $, businesses would get $, banks would get $, local small shops would get $, mortgages & bills could be paid, insurance companies would get $, Taxes would get $, So essentially that $ would go out & filter right back in to improve our Country while simultaneously improving our quality of Life. Every bit of the economy would somehow find a way to benefit off of this situation... I don't get why we haven't even Given it a chance?? If it doesn't help? Then by all means stop it and figure out what else we should do. (I hope we TRY something soon, before things get any more unstable. The worst thing we could do is continue on doing exactly what we are currently doing.)

well done .. very helpful . thank you

Thanks this was very informative!

🤔What about designing buildings that could be multi-use from the start? The glass skyscraper type of office seems like a bad idea from the outset. The enormous glass windows mean you need a lot of A/C, glass is a bad thermal insulator (making the fight to heat or cool even worse), and open-area office plans are hell if you need to concentrate to do your job. At my previous job, we went from an older building that was too small, to a larger building that was also a glass skyscraper. The older building was totally fine except for the actual amount of space - windows that could open, walls to get privacy and quiet, but enough doors and hallways to facilitate collaboration. I'm certain you could convert at least half of that older building to apartments, without any major changes. I'm assuming totally new buildings could be built this way too, right? 🙂

I'm okay with most things in life but what oddly gave me an existential crisis was once i learned that our society does not care if u r not able to afford the cost of living. You can live out ur entire life but our society REQUIRES you to have a certain amount of money in order to even have the most basic quality of living. That amount of money is getting more and more unattainable for even the lowest living standards. It creeps me out that our society is so harsh that if someone can't come up with a couple thousand dollars per month.. then OH WELL..  there is no resources for those stuck in poverty. Our society points and complains about the homeless issue (which is understandable) but how can we not take a step back & CONSIDER that this problem might reflect a problem in our Society? Idk.. i think there is a line between {people who are stuck in poverty~and~those who openly sleep in front of shops & liter & act disrespectfully towards their surroundings} With that said: i wish more than anything else in this world, that we could find a way to help those decent people who are stuck in poverty because once in poverty, it's very unlikely that they will ever full escape poverty. If we had some way of helping them, it could trickle down to other aspects of our society. Money can go to landlords, property owners, shops, corporations, insurance companies, taxes, banks, etc. but if we just continue to let people in poverty be completely isolated, then we are increasing the amount of people who struggle to fit into society and we will see these effects trickle down throughout our society and economy as a whole. So thinking about that gives me even more dread because it's so obvious how this is negatively effecting society and yet our society has done NOTHING about this and it seems to be such a touchy topic for anyone to consider anything related to it. It's weird how touchy this topic is when our system has no problem bailing out banks & airline companies whenever they need... But if we were to consider to help decent people who are stuck in poverty.. then no way and it starts a huge argument. It seems so backwards? How does bailing out the banks and airline companies help society and the economy at all? If anything it shows that the economy & society is struggling & bailing out banks doesn't help the vast majority of people. Except for maybe the most wealthiest people.. Anyways, after considering all of this, i just can't help but wish that people could be able to live their lives at the most basic level of living without so much stress, restrictions, demands forced upon them. I just wish our society could at least have SOMETHING for those who deal with poverty but are good people and are willing to do, help, try anything. It's different if someone wants to be an unwilling, negative, unhelpful person... I understand that not everyone can or deserves help, it's something we should each have to at least try and earn but right now our society provides nothing and this freaks me out. Life is getting more and more unaffordable and requirements for renting, etc. become more and more difficult to fulfill... I just don't think this is how we should run our society. I'm not against capitalism at all. It's just certain things can get out of control and i really think the way our modern society functions has become so dysfunctional and getting more and more unattainable for the average person and it freaks me out that no one is doing anything about this... This gives me an existential crisis.

Thank you 👍👍👍

Phoenix Az has had a Few Large Offices converted to Housing about 15 - 20 years ago... Not sure what else since then!

welcome back !!!

Nicely put together overview of conversion issues! (And I loved the NYC/Toronto flatiron duality easter egg :) In architecture firms that do both residential and commercial work, often the two are in separate departments because the requirements, design headspace, and building codes are that much different. Older, shorter, and narrower buildings, often built before the advent of the cubical and pure mechanical ventilation or lighting, offer the best conversion opportunities. There is another another goldilocks zone that exists where the floor plate is just deep enough (and the exiting sized properly) that after the condo units, the remaining inner ring is just the right size to house the various amenities that don't need direct light. As you say, if even a fraction of the buildings can be well converted, that is still a lot of potential new housing. And as someone who is passionate about adaptive reuse, that excites me aplenty. :)

Your videos have a big impact on me. Thank you so much!