In a recent article in The New York Times, Anna Kodé lamented the blandness of multifamily architecture in the U.S. and posited several theories for

Why does American multifamily architecture look so banal? Here’s one reason

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2023-03-29 22:30:07

In a recent article in The New York Times, Anna Kodé lamented the blandness of multifamily architecture in the U.S. and posited several theories for this disappointment.

More specifically, it is the peculiar anomaly that requires multifamily buildings to include a second staircase with a connecting corridor for buildings with more than 3 stories. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, this requirement is largely non-existent. It is this regulation that causes our multifamily housing to vary dramatically from the rest of the world. It results in significantly larger buildings with units that are less livable, less climate adaptive, less family friendly, less community-oriented—and potentially much more expensive—than most other countries.

I’ve been fortunate to work in both the U.S. and Germany during in my career as an architect. This has necessitated navigating building regulations in multiple countries and languages. One of the things that immediately stood out was that the typical multifamily layout in the U.S.—a double loaded corridor, or hotel-like plan with a corridor down the middle and units on either side—was incredibly rare in Europe, largely reserved for student and worker housing. The overwhelming majority of projects were buildings with just a single stair, or, as I have taken to calling them, Point Access Blocks. These buildings—low- and midrise, single-stair buildings either freestanding or connected in series—are ubiquitous from Adelaide to Zürich.

As I started researching floor plans and building regulations in other countries, I realized that most were similar to Germany’s, and none were like ours. There are of course differences: The allowed number of units served by a single stair, the number of floors, whether units opened directly into the stairway or not. However, almost universally, single-stair buildings were the norm. It should be noted that single stair doesn’t necessarily mean one means of egress; Germany’s building codes recognize fire department rescue from an aerial apparatus as a secondary means.

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