Louis Kahn, one of the greatest American architects of the 20th century, used to talk to bricks. When he’d ask a brick what it wanted to be, he’d say the brick would inevitably answer, “an arch.” And surely enough, Kahn created some phenomenally beautiful brick arches in his various projects across the world. If Kahn were alive today and were to ask an office building what it wanted to be, the words he would be least likely to hear would be “an apartment building.”
Yes, exceptions exist but as has been widely documented, the characteristics that make structures well suited to serve office workers are generally the same characteristics that make them ill suited to serve residents. Retrofitting office buildings to become apartments is climatically responsible and needs to be part of the solution to reimagining downtowns. The economics of such transformations, however, require significant subsidies and write downs in asset values. Absent those subsidies, the likelihood of conversions…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
