101–110 of 309 posts
Perhaps the solution is not to have apartments, and instead spread people and activity out across the country. Particularly pertinent in the Covid era when we have seen what living on top of each other leads to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that you can't track how many disasters were prevented by having two means of egress, so I cant imagine there are real statistics on that I hate the space argument because its a money argument, not a real quality of life issue - make the building 1 floor taller, or don't cram your residents just because you wanted to milk 4 apts instead of 3 on a floor.
The amount of available space isn't the only benefit of using only one staircase. It also means the units can face outward in multiple directions and there's a more central common area.
No one should be surprised that fire safety laws are going to the extreme for safety at a large cost to floor space.
Perhaps the solution is not to have apartments, and instead spread people and activity out across the country. Particularly pertinent in the Covid era when we have seen what living on top of each other leads to.
If that's your thing, great, do it, you have your pick of geographies because nearly all of the US is empty space. But if that's not what a person wants, and instead they appreciate the things that humans can create and do for each other when there are many nearby, there are very very few locations available, the are all extremely pricy because the supply has been artificially constrained by reggulations of people who live in cities, but apparently don't want to live in cities.
A staircase takes up about the plan size of one bedroom. If that's too much, you're probably trying to cram too many people into a building. There's efficiency, and then there's, "more people live in this city than can all fit on the sidewalks." Maybe just don't.
In one you've got units clustered around a staircase landing.
In the other you've got a long hallway and 2 staircases with units along the hallway.
Just think of how much smaller cars could be if we removed seatbelts and airbags! There's no evidence that people who ride in cars are safer than people who ride in school buses (which have no seatbelts or airbags).
Here's something that happened one week ago, a perfect (and sad) example of what happens when you only have one set of stairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Osaka_building_fire > The victims gasped for air and had difficulties escaping, as there was only one escape route, with the emergency stairs and elevators being located outside the clinic. > Experts were surprised by the fire's high death toll. The authorit…
> In 2011, Tanimoto stabbed his own son in the head in an apparent forced suicide. That's the weirdest euphemism for murder I've ever seen.
I don't believe he killed his son, and I believe the wording in the articles is intended to indicate that he tried to force his son to kill himself and ended up stabbing him in the head.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wood is very common in single story houses in the US. Large apartment buildings are made of concrete and steel. The tallest wood framed project I've seen was 3-4 stories with the first two concrete.
Fire codes were recently changed and now buildings with 4 or 5 wooden floors are becoming common: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
But the idea of code defining form, and how we can meld safety, efficiency and beauty together - that's interesting to me.
I found this article [1] on the wiki page of 5-over-1 and find it hilarious. It's an interesting and biting critique of a number of styles that are applied to 5-over-1. I wonder if we will ever have again in this country truly beautiful housing for the masses, or if we will look back on the 2000s and 2010s US as we do now, looking at Soviet bloc apartments from the 60s and 70s.
https://www.westword.com/arts/denver-is-drowning-in-awful-ar...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you post some data backing up that assertion? Neither you nor the article have posted any studies and I'm genuinely curious about it.
This page makes a claim and has links to sources at the bottom: “International Fire Death Rate statistics show no correlation between the allowable building height for residential buildings with a single egress stair and fatality rates. The U.S. NFPA attributes the worldwide trend in decreased fatality rates between 1979 and 2007 to improved in firefighting capacities, stringent regulation of combustible materials in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of available space isn't the only benefit of using only one staircase. It also means the units can face outward in multiple directions and there's a more central common area.
A lot of regulations are designed to make new construction as expensive as possible and limit usable floor space as much as possible. No one should be surprised that fire safety laws are going to the extreme for safety at a large cost to floor space.
I'm looking at Billionaires Row in Manhattan, and I don't think they have two staircases. At 1400ft tall and 60ft wide, I don't think they have room. Regulations are for little people. And since they're really financial instruments, the buildings are still only half full! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g
While they might work as far as providing residents two routes out in an emergency, they do present challenges to firefighters [1]:
> Jack J. Murphy, a former firefighter, fire marshal, and current chairman of the New York City High-Rise Fire Safety Directors Association, has inspected some of these buildings and says they present unique challenges for firefighters. For one, the buildings’ small footprints mean very narrow scissor stairwells that can have five or more turns between floors. “What would that do to my hose stretch?” Murphy said. The compact size also means tight quarters for operation and medical staging in an emergency.
[1] https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-medi...