How do you convert commercial floor space into housing? A group of professionals put their heads together and came up with some answers.
Recently, a group of colleagues and I realised that we were all thinking about the same thing: how to address the housing crisis. Our informal think tank included a sustainability consultant, a developer, a builder, an investor, and a social infrastructure specialist, so we each held a piece of the puzzle of understanding the barriers to implementation. We also all had a similar inkling towards a potential solution: conversion of existing office space into apartments.
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By putting our heads together, we thought we could better understand the overall context of converting commercial floorspace into habitations. Perhaps building the composite picture of challenges would light up the path to overcoming the obstacles.
But there were obstacles
But the more we looked, the more obstacles became visible, starting with planning regulations which currently incentivise office development over housing in the heart of the city.
Then there are the tax changes in NSW which make developing any property extremely challenging, high construction costs post-COVID and, not least, the physical matter of the current configuration of office buildings and the amount of daylight required for residential occupancy, among other issues.
I have noticed an internal conversation in my thinking process that centred on statements such as, “government needs to change x…” or, “Valuers need to become more comfortable with risk in this sector…” or whatever.
How about stepping out of the current paradigm
What I see now is that when I start thinking the solution lies with others, that is a signal I am still trying to work within the current paradigm. It is vital to step out of that to enter the realm of genuine innovation.
The paradigm shift is to move the consideration of seeing problems into the mode of living systems thinking, which is focused on uncovering potential.
Our shared dialogue around the “housing crisis” needs to be broadened – because this is not a “housing” crisis.
The crisis is not confined to the residential sector, or a particular category of people. This dilemma is about our patterns of living and our relationships with each other. It is also about our relationships with the places where we dwell: for business, for enjoyment, and for caring for each other.
This moment of solution-finding is, therefore, a much larger opportunity to consider the relationship between humans and sheltering within the living system of the city.
We have a clear need for more housing stock, and in a post-COVID world, we have empty office space and struggling retailers who relied on office workers.
We could force people back into their offices five days a week, but that creates other problems. People have adapted to the new pattern and made arrangements to manage their lives, including childcare and maintaining social belonging, based on this flexibility.
If we revert to pre-Covid patterns, we also lose the value of the investment in infrastructure that gave us the flexibility to work from home.
So, the real question now is, how can this flexibility and its benefits be retained while still rectifying the loss of income experienced since Covid by retail businesses in the city centre?
It is also clear there is a need for more people to be able to live closer to where they work – particularly key workers. This need has both an availability dimension and an affordability one. Many key worker jobs in urban lifeblood sectors such as retail, hospitality, cleaning and transport are entry-level or low paid, and much of the rental residential in the city is at the premium end of the affordability spectrum.
If instead of trying to bring people back into now-empty office buildings for work, if we were able rapidly convert them for use as apartments, we would achieve nested benefits for the community.
People can be living closer to work, and there is more income for retail businesses in the city which are declining without large numbers of office workers. A base is created for other kinds of businesses to open in the city, because as the local population grows and diversifies, so too should the variety of businesses needed in the city.
Design of retrofits, repurposing and re-lifing can also support positive changes that retain existing embodied carbon while enhancing the liveability of a building. Penetrations in facades can bring in light and create space.
Let’s soften the edges and create net benefits
Reframing spatial planning to incorporate a diversity of spaces in an organic patchwork of interactions rather than rigidly zoned for specific populations: office workers having coffee meetings don’t have to be hidden nor isolated from children being noisy and playful. We can do “both and” this: achieve an overall uplift in liveability and amenity for spaces of all kinds in the city while still being suited to and supportive of commercial activity.
This softening of edges, this allowing for more texture and nooks and crannies, doesn’t just make the habitat more humane for humans, it invites other kin to co-inhabit them with us.
One example is the deliberate design by architects of a nesting site for Red-tailed Hawks on an apartment building in New York. On a smaller scale, native bee hives and insect hotels are becoming more familiar at Australian schools, commercial buildings and multi-residential developments.
This creating of opportunities for beings to be in relationship with each other – bustling, jostling, quietly contemplating, playing, making, living – this is placemaking. This generosity is what makes a place rich and vibrant. It also makes it resilient, which we know from ecosystem maturity models.
Finally, we have significant challenges in housing affordability and while many well-intentioned people have argued the solution is to deliver more newly constructed housing stock, we are curious about a way to realise a different potential that arises from resolving the two issues above.
This involves imagining an adaptable solution that could be targeted to those most in need – incentivised even – to help bring back more vitality into our cities and care for the people who work in them.
The integration of adaptability into any approach likely seems more obvious in a post-Covid world.
Most people in my experience are holding the future with more uncertainty. However, many have long understood that robust living systems are adaptable over time so they can evolve and respond to shifts in that system. In this sense, an adaptable approach enables support for the current needs we have – housing – and the ability to adjust to new conditions in the future.
None of this is simple, however, the will I and my think tank colleagues have to contribute to the development of design solutions for the city we call home is very strong. To manifest this spirit of regeneration, what is needed is a specific application opportunity, so we are looking for a specific building/location as a focus to begin.
While we will not solve everything for all situations through the one location, it is only in the detailed consideration of the one location from a living systems paradigm, that we initiate the process that leads to a greater understanding and builds the evidence base for transformation.
– with David Arnott, associate, Introba