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Nicholas Weininger's avatar

There's a good argument that the right type of housing to build in a deep-floor-plate office tower conversion is the SRO: https://www.therebuild.pub/p/rebuilding-the-bottom-rung

That's another once-common housing form that we've since made illegal for dubious reasons, and from a broad lifecycle/life-stages view, it's potentially complementary to courtyard housing.

Alicia Pederson's avatar

yes, that makes sense architecturally, although I'm not sure if it does financially? I think these buildings are extremely expensive to maintain and operate. Not sure they work financially as SROs.

J E's avatar

Our corporate overlords won’t allow this. They want you to commute for hours and they want you to suffer.

Elizabeth's avatar

Another great piece! I think it's okay to just convert the office buildings that we can and try to work with/around the rest, while focusing on building courtyard blocks as our future. I'm curious about your opinion on skywalks, especially in very cold and very hot climates. Are there any examples of those in being built in courtyard blocks?