Category: General Article

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The Ultimate Shared Living Suites – FOR DEVELOPERS

This version is for the smaller walkup building of 25’x60′ in order to fit the programmatic components comfortably. It provides a way for a developer to accommodate more people within a building footprint and thus increase the yearly income.

The concept is simple, take what would normally be a three bedroom apartment and change it to 4 shared living suites where individuals get their own private suite, complete with a private bathroom, bedroom and living space, and then share only the kitchen and other building amenities.  For a 5 story walkup, the potential is for 19 ‘bedroom suites’ versus the conventional 5-3 bedroom apartments.  It is simple math from this point to understand that the suites are occupied with working adults while 2/3’s of the bedrooms from a standard apartment are occupied by children, or, that home office.

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Best Townhouse Plan for New Construction “‘8c’ Independent Party-Wall Prototype”

For new construction, and in this as other studies to create rental apartments, an Architect is going to be confronted by two likely scenarios, the adjacent buildings have existing party-walls with the property line running through it’s center, or, there are no adjacent buildings and thus new party-walls can be built directly over the property line.  In this version of our townhouse plan, we explore the ramifications of an existing party-wall that can not be used as it does not meet earthquake code requirements, or, a new building positioned it’s party-wall completely onto its own property.

This results in slightly less interior space, but also creates a unique situation where the joists can run from the front of the building to the back.  The design result, is a 2 bedroom apartment with a huge great room with 3 windows bringing in the light and air, something that most people in New York City, Chicago, Boston or any large city would love to have.

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Analysis of Residential Stair Configurations for Townhouses

This is a very cut and dry analysis of four different stair configurations that could help generate an additional $54,000 in rental income from a 4 story townhouse type structure just by reconfiguring the stair, touched on in a previous article (which we would recommend reading).  The first option is the traditional townhouse stair, found in most townhouses in New York City.  Often this stair offers stunning architectural detail and should be preserved, but more often than not the original stair has been replaced with a metal stair, due to sagging or some other issue.  Sadly the replacements lack character and often do not fix the underlying issue to why they were sagging and are themselves sagging, causing stress fractures in party-walls at each end of the stair.

The advantages of replacing the stair are simple, it frees up square footage that can be used inside an apartment.  The following compares three different stairs, the traditional, the compact and the ‘extended landing’, and a new comer, the squarish stair which is the best option (< spoiler alert). It is noted as ‘Stair 8’ which reflects the number of versions we’ve studied to get to that point. This ‘best option 8’ is shown in the article ‘The Ultimate Townhouse Floor Plan’ released August 28, 2017, so take a look at that one as well.

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Best Layouts for Townhouses – DIFFERENT SIZES

The following studies are not for new construction, but rather for the traditional townhouses of varying lengths, from 35′ to 50′, representing the vast majority of townhouses in New York City.  The study examines the most efficient layouts for these variety of sizes and why they are efficient.

Efficient Layouts?  In architectural design, the efficiency phase of the design process is an effort to minimize circulation space or other ‘wasted space’ (like public spaces) so there is more square footage available for usable rooms, and, with the newly found square footage to allot that space according to hierarchy, that is the Great Room (Living, Kitchen and Dining, in that order) being the place where people spend most of their daytime hours and thus represents the highest priority and top of the hierarchical pyramid, followed by bedrooms, bathrooms and the other rooms.  To be efficient in architectural design means to leverage the available square footage to the best benefit of the end user.

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Embracing the Family Clan, for their Healthy Financial Future

With baby boomers reaching maturity, new responsibilities can become overwhelming in a struggling economy. With parents in retirement, children growing up but staying at home or leaving, the financial burden for each can strain the whole family’s finances to a breaking point.  Certainly if one finds themselves living paycheck to paycheck it is easy to make an argument for change.

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The Urban Lot & House Relationsip, and its Pros/Cons.

This is a study of existing property configurations in order to avoid their pitfalls and problems when designing new housing.

In New York City, especially Brooklyn, we have been handed existing property sizes and residences whose layout was determined by someone in a different century.  Often, as I have discovered in many renovations, the layouts are inadequate for modern living and the concepts determining building placement often leaves city streets’ character looking stressed.  Inside, the kitchen and bathroom is too small, the layouts are closed consisting of small rooms, there isn’t additional half-bath or full baths for larger families, and often the bathrooms are stuffed into areas that were once closets.  And outside is often completely ignored, with maybe a concrete slab and a thing loosely referred to as a fence.  Setbacks not relating to anything, driveways, uprooted sidewalks, inadequate front yards all combine to leave some streets struggling to become nice enough to make its residents happy to live there.

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Top 5 Things the City of Newburgh Should Do Now.

With several hundred vacant buildings in Newburgh, NY owned by the city, the city needs to take drastic action to stop the decay and reverse the momentum immediately.

While the excuses of lost jobs, crime and the effects of urban renewal can be reflected upon, the lack of motivated intelligent and experienced direction is at the heart of the city’s failures. I too hear the voices of ‘oh I hope someone renovates this majestic structure one day’ and while everyone can share this sentiment it just isn’t enough to affect actual change, for if the city does not drastically modify its approach and attitude all those structures which hold so much potential will eventually need to be torn down, leaving more ‘urban renewal’ effects dotted throughout the city and thus further contributing to the decline of the city. The dam has broken and the water is all but gone.  First step, repair and strengthen the dam in a way that is more self-maintaining, in order to prevent decay or a breach in the future… so the water may once again fill in the cavity.

The following are the five most important things the city can do to begin to stop the negative momentum and change people’s perception of the city as one of opportunity.

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Human Design: Eyelashes and Eyebrows

Architecture is fundamentally connected to humans. That which is not connected is not architecture.

To understand function and how it influences the way something looks, one need only look at the human machine, and in this article the eyelashes and eyebrows. While the conclusions here are based on observation they hold within them a fundamental logic which is hard to deny.

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Col Puc torna d’attualità… (translated). Villa Mugoni Resort Project

Translated from Italian:

Col Puc torna d’attualità il progetto di Baroudi sull’antica villa Mugoni

With the Puc now comes the Baroudi project on the old villa Mugoni

This is the only reconversion intervention planned by the urban plan outside the city

28 giugno 2011

Read original story in Italian here: http://lanuovasardegna.gelocal.it/regione/2011/06/28/news/col-puc-torna-d-attualita-il-progetto-di-baroudi-sull-antica-villa-mugoni-1.3476831

ALGHERO. The only structural conversion in the extra-urban area provided by the Catalan urban planning plan, currently subject to a severe political confrontation, is that of the Mugoni villa in Porto Conte. Ancient aristocratic hermitage in the heart of the Bay of Ninfe, with a large manor house, stables, warehouses, a large park immersed in Mediterranean scrub, can be transformed into a large luxury hotel. A hundred rooms with many stars, sports facilities, leisure facilities, spa, swimming pools, tennis, a buen retreat for top-quality clients.

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