Issuu

Table of Contents The Increments of Neighborhood: A Compendium of Built Types for Walkable and Vibrant Communities.

Preface 6 Architectural Type, Increment, and Commodity Challenges to Realizing Great Neighborhoods Innovation and Background Buildnings Incremental Buildings Making Communities over Time Considerations on Type and Increment

Brief Architectural Historical Context The Urban Increment The Art of the Urban Typological Segue Understanding Typology: Some Basic Impacts of Type Type, Communities, Architects, and Media

Single Family Houses Mansion House without Alley Picturesque (Often Victorian) Home Center Hall (Often Colonial) Home Veranda Cottage Modern Cape Cod New American Foursquare Switchback Sidestair House Side Stair House Lots Sideyard House Charleston Single House Lots Townhouses as Detached Singles Corner Lot Attached Patio/Courtyard House The Detached Compound/Courtyard House Raised Beach House The New Saddlebag/Cab Forward House One-Story Courtyard Duplexes Detached Bungalow Court Homes Tiny House/Student Cottage Katrina Cottage Coach House Granny Flat/Fonzie Flat/Accessory Dwelling Carriage House Liners Outbuildings

34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80

Townhouses/Terrace Homes

One-Story Rowhouses and Shotgun Houses Carpet Cottages 12'-Wide Townhouse 14'-Wide Townhouse 16'-Wide Townhouse 18'-Wide Townhouse 20'-Wide Townhouse 20'- to 24'-Wide Townhouse 25'-Wide Townhouse Courtyard Townhouse (27' and wider) Corner/End of Row Townhouses Duplex Townhouses Tuck-Under Townhouses Corner Tuck-Under Townhouses Single-Loaded Liner Townhouses Shallow-Wide Liner Townhouses Attached Townhouse Courtyards Attached Townhouse Courtyards, above Podium

84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118

Stacked Residential Units

Two Flats/Stacked Flats (One/Two over One) English Basement Stacked Maisonettes (Two-over-Twos) Open Court Duplex Terrace Units Duplex over Flats (Tri-Plex) Buildings Triple-Decker Buildings “Charleston” Triplex Units Four-plex Unit Buildings Walk-Up Six-plex Building Corner “Manor House” Stacked Units Attached and Stacked Courtyard Residential

122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 138 140 142

Multi-family Residential

12-Unit Walk-Up Apartment Building Walk-Up Breezeway Garden Apartments Motel/Gallery Residential Corridor Multi-family Residential The Texas Wrap/Donut Residential Parking Podium Stacked Ranches Hybrid Courtyard Residential Microunit Residential and Student Housing

146 148 150 152 156 158 160 162 164

Commercial and Commercial Multi-Use Buildings

Food Truck, Pop-Up, and Temporary Retail 24' Wood Parking Lot Liner Buildings Corner Convenience and Gas Station Pad Sites Single-Story In-Line Commercial Buildings Liner Retail Multi-Story Commercial Liner Second Story and other Urban Cinemas Upper-Story, Large-Format Retail Office Over Retail — Stick Office Over Retail — Bar Joist Commercial — Tilt Slab Conventional Urban Office Buildings

Mobility and Access 170 172 174 176 178 180 182 184 186 190 192 194 196

Mixed-Use Buildings Live-Work Unit Two Units over Commercial Three Units over Commercial Townhouse over Retail — Wood Construction Townhouse over Flex Retail — Concrete Podium Four-Plex over Commercial Berkeley Block (Stacker Enabled Mixed-Use) Podium Multi-Family Residential — Type V Podium Multi-Family Residential — Type III Proprietary and Light Gauge Metal Systems High-Rise Urban Blocks Mixed-Use Urban Stacked Power Centers Hybrid Courtyard Combinations and Ensembles Tower over Wrapped Garage Base Block/Post/Frame, and Plank Urban Blocks Modular Formwork Tower High-Rise Towers Set Back upon Urban Bases Public Buildings

200 202 202 206 210 214 216 218 222 224 226 228 230 232 234 236 238

Open Market Shed Urban Market Hall Community Center Post Office House of Worship Fire Station Police Station Library Preschool/Daycare/Community School Charter/Private/Community School Elementary School Junior High, Middle, and High Schools Town/City Hall Courthouse Concert/Assembly Hall Hospital Arena Convention Center Stadium

244 246 248 250 252 254 256 258 260 262 264 266 268 270 272 274 276 278 280

Pedestrian-Oriented Street Furniture Bike Storage Bike Share

284 288 290

On Street Parking Stem Driveway Parking Alley-Loaded Garage/Space Screened Parking Lot Stacked Parking Trays Lined/Screened Parking Garages — Unadorned Conventional Parking Garage — Exposed Staggered-Tier Garage Double-Helix Deck Compact Speed Ramp Garage Parking Stackers Underground Parking Elevator Garage Parking Robotic Parking Machines Urban Screened Highway

292 294 296 298 302 304 306 308 310 312 314 316 318 320 322

Car Share Taxi/Jitney/Car Service Shuttle Bus Bus Bus Rapid Transit Automated Guideway Transit Commuter Rail Streetcars, Trolleys, and Trams Light Rail Heavy Metro Rail — Elevated Above Ground Heavy Metro Rail — Below Ground Multi-Modal Transit Station

324 326 328 330 332 334 336 338 340 342 344 346

Endnotes

348

Acknowledgments/Image Credits

352

Bibliography

370

Preface

In preparation for this book, I sat down for a conversation with Mike Watkins, my friend, neighbor, professional colleague, and a former leader at the planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk in his home/office around the corner from my house in Kentlands. On my way to his place, I passed a variety of distinct building types framing the public realm surrounding the tall trees of what the locals call the Village Green, which serves as the backdrop to the annual Oktoberfest and other events. When I arrived at Mike’s, he engaged me in a very thought provoking conversation about type. He took a white ceramic coffee mug and a familiar mass-produced red plastic party cup and put them side by side, and asked me: Which one is for drinking cold liquids?

Drinking vessels with varying characteristics.

He then relayed a definition of type attributed to his former boss, Andres Duany: “Form determined by function, and confirmed by culture.” In the case of the mug and the cup, they both hold liquids, but are distinct in their missions. We know that the mug is for hot liquids because of the handle and the insulating properties conveyed by the ceramic material, while the cup proclaims its disposable nature by the flex in its thin walls and celebratory color. Similarly, while most of the buildings I passed on the way to Mike’s were fee-simple single-family homes, they were unique in some particular characteristic. They varied in three ways: 1) size – how many bedrooms/living areas they contained, 2) position – whether mid-block or along a corner, and/or 3) program – housing arrangements such as a granny flat with an accessory residential unit over a garage. Their distinctions in character and mission provide an immense richness to the core of Kentlands, for a reason beyond the urban plan or their well-articulated Federalist architectural skins.

Stefanos Polyzoides and Elizabeth Moule not only include Andres Duany’s quotation above in most of the zoning codes that their firm creates, they augment this quotation with their own definition for architectural building type:

a structure defined by the combination of configuration, placement, and function.1 Realizing great communities that are sustainable and cost effective rely on a careful understanding of type and increment. In the professional practice at Torti Gallas where I work, based on methodologies established by John Torti, consideration of type starts at the very beginning of any design process, when the increment of the community context within which a project is to be incorporated is contemplated. Type remains a foundational reference throughout the Torti Gallas design process, from where a building’s basic organizational principles emerge. A building’s style or design methodology has to be reconciled with its type, and how it serves within the greater public realm as an increment of neighborhood. Even when building products, materials, and details are chosen, the design teams are conscious of type and increment. The duality of type/increment is interwoven into all scales of our practice, from the large regional masterplan to the small scale of how individual neighborhood homes are crafted. Often, as conscientious designers, we are forced to impose this typological thinking where we work, since zoning codes and comprehensive plans tend to provide little specific guidance. The resulting structures then placed in the plans, and the land they occupy, are typically private, and are then subject to market forces that extract economic value from them as well as from their public commons (location, quality of the school system, neighborhood amenities, etc.). These buildings are then bought and sold, and have value assigned by the marketplace - a value given based upon factors of design, place, community identity, type, and a story associated with each building.

Architectural Type, Increment, and Commodity

This book focuses on commodified real estate products in the service of good urbanism, great places, and wonderful communities. In this volume, these walkable types are contrasted with missed opportunities, which are typically suburban, vehicularly-oriented building projects. This comparison often exposes an aspect of the walkable type which highlights its sustainabile resource deployment and potential for longevity relative to the missed opportunity. This effort is not an attempt to examine architectural masterpieces, but rather to learn how architecture (and through that architecture – great public realms) is made out of commodity. The buildings described in the first six sections of this volume have, for the most part, not been commissioned by a patron. Rather, this portion of the book is by its nature a focus on private-sector contributions to the public realm. Economy is inherently a chief concern with their creation. Therefore, inexpensive construction technology—particularly wood stick construction—is a primary focus. The seventh portion of the book is about public buildings. Such celebrated, high profile architectural projects appear to have unlimited budgets—concert halls, sports stadiums, corporate headquarters, and large-scale government projects. Each are well-funded opportunities to express an architect’s innate vision. Many of these result from distortions within the economy where capital resources have been allocated—through market fluke, patron donation, or government bonding authority— to allow for construction of works not bound by the limitations that conventional market forces impose upon private sector construction. The kind of "architectural exhibitionism" (to borrow a Vincent Scully phrase) that can result will always exist to satisfy egos and our cultural, perhaps innate human, thirst for the “new.”2 These well-endowed buildings will continue to generate excitement and attention. Some resulting works will be timeless, but others will fade into irrelevance, or even community revulsion. This book will offer a contrasting vision of making great places with buildings produced within the bounds of an efficient, democratic, effectively competitive marketplace. Counterintuitively, many of the more prosaic and economical works in this compendium are likely to have a longer-term impact than many intentional architectural monuments, even though they are not necessarily architectural masterpieces. A purpose of this book is to show how the real estate products that have been developed and refined over fifty years in

Masterplan diagram of typological diversity. Central yellow-orange-cream color types are “lighter on the land,” less expensive to build, and can be used to establish the central place in the initial phase. Later phases can use more expensive types (pink-[podium], purple-[high-rise]) to reinforce, populate and densify the central place.

M. Mechanic Hall, Baltimore. Celebrated when new, the building was still loved by some, but reviled by others, and has been recently torn down.

Shirlington, Arlington, VA. Wood pedestal/podium buildings under construction.

Considerations on Type and Increment What is learned from compiling all of these types? What new can be added to our understanding now?

Brief Architectural Historical Context Discussions of type have always been present in the architectural discourse, from its earliest days as an academic discipline - back when an explicit idea of type was propagated by Quatremère de Quincy at the end of the eighteenth century when contemplating the appropriateness of architecture. In the nineteenth century, a number of handbooks appeared that classified buildings by their programs and functions.1 The advent of International-style Modernism in the twentieth century gave credence to a worldview of functionalism, rejecting over a century of teachings of formalized, constrictive type, preferring the freedoms allowed by genericized, adaptable free space, agnostic to type. During this era, there were those who reacted against the predominant ideologies, such as Saverio Muratori and Gianfranco Caniggia, who advocated for the primacy of the tradition of city building and building types as the basis for understanding cities and urban form. Caniggia specifically discussed the transformation of the city as a process: “cities are built incrementally with many small elements being juxtaposed.”2 When a rigorous functionalist attitude developed within the Italian architectural discourse, Aldo Rossi reacted against it to champion type in The Architecture of the City, which reasserted the value of considering type in architecture.3 Unlike those who advocated for design based upon historic precedent of the city, in considering the creation of new buildings in the urban realm, Rossi (and others like Gregotti, Aymonino, etc.) supported a liberal view that defended the autonomy of the architect and their prerogative to create whatever urban artifact felt appropriate to the time and place. Rossi felt that this autonomy allowed for the individual expression of architects and those who build, and in turn the vestiges of their representations of their time and era provide richness in the urban form over the long term.4 How can architecture be categorized? Is form highlighted, or should specific uses, or a particular meaning be the taxonomical focus? In this volume building types are categorized in two ways: first, morphologically, where all types included in this compendium contribute to framing urbanism. Types have been avoided, typically suburban types, that do not contribute to the creation

of public rooms—be that streets, mews, rosewalks, squares, or bounded parks—other than showing those which hinder value creation as “missed opportunities.” Secondly, categorization occurs through building types that have been legitimated through building codes and accepted through this age's marketplace as commodified products, traded and sold. In this effort to compile the types herein, historic relics have not been sought, but rather present-day active solutions, repeatedly considered to resolve the integration of current needs into walkable urban form. The real estate market is built upon the specialization of type, from how suburban pad-sites are measured, graded, and sold (traffic counts, commercial brokers, retail contractors) to the economy surrounding the transfer of single-family homes (conventional vs. jumbo loans, home inspectors, home appraisers, etc.). For the designer working in the real-world private sector, type is an unavoidable basis-of-design, down to the real world subtleties such as the difference in value creation between a 16-foot and 18-foot townhouse. This volume assumes that there are attributes within types that support and augment value in walkable neighborhoods, and aspects of type that detract from a quality environment. In that, the types compiled herein serve Raphael Moneo’s “mechanism of composition” without shame, providing typological “building blocks” that provide great “walk appeal” for those contemplating the completion of a single infill opportunity or large masterplanning exercise.5 With large developments this is particularly critical, even if the imposition of an urban increment is imposed by government authority or a large private development entity - critical at the beginning for ease of project implementation as well as for the continued health of the built neighborhood over the long term. For example, careful planning with type allows developers and planners to increase quality and financial spreads in initial phases of large planning projects by using the less expensive construction methods in earlier phases to craft the place, which then prepares the market and fuels later growth for more intensive building types (images, next page).6 But also with an incremental approach, the residents who own/rent the individual properties established in the masterplan have a greater opportunity to invest/control their own living environments over time. Beyond mere planning and urban design, in the 21st century of big data analysis, type is the elemental “measurable” in the extraction of data about the performance of the public realm. The advancements of

Designing with typology example

Previous supplanted development scheme: same site and same density (unit count) as scheme below. All Type V, fourstory wood construction, acheiving 2,000 units.

Revised scheme: phase one plan. Less expensive, â€œlighter on the landâ€? building construction types (self-parking, stacked housing, and walk-up multi-family) achieve placemaking and allow more money to be available to build infrastructure and create and define central park along project spine. The profit spreads in this initial phase are the greatest in the developerâ€™s pro-forma, allowing the developer more comfort with the risk of the untested market.

our information age are beginning to provide the ability to quantifiably measure attributes of the urban form, that until now, were considered only qualitatively. The types in a neighborhood can be seen to act in a way similar to pieces on a chessboard. A townhouse may only have the influence of a pawn, a rail transit station may have the impact of two queens, and the storage uses of parking lots and stormwater ponds are simply like empty squares on the board; in combination, a row of townhouses can have the influence on a neighborhood like a wall of pawns on the chessboard, and the placement of civic amenities like clubhouses and libraries can strengthen a street like a rook or bishop defends a row. One of Aldo Rossi's propositions is that a city develops according to the dynamics between types.7 Today, this can begin to be measured. Yaromir Steiner has shown that in the walkable town centers he has developed, the cross-shopping factor between restaurant/entertainment uses and retail increases sales in both by between 10-25% over conventional retail arrangements without these "leisure boost" synergies.8 The apartment developer and management firm Bozzuto has tracked a 15-20% increase in rent for transit-proximate rental units compared to drivable suburban locations in the same relative market.9 These are specific measurements of the interactions of type. Private research firms are now studying the existing apartment offerings in a regional market, assessing for apartment managers and developers the appropriate value of base "naked" rent in that market, and projecting what value of each potential amenity (swimming pools, fitness center) would add to the underlying base rent. Access to a park, rail transit, a nearby white-tablecloth

Revised scheme: full build-out, which achieves same density of 2,000 units as previous scheme above. The later buildings reinforce, populate, and densify the spine from the central place. The profit spreads are less with more expensive wood Type 3A and light gauge podium building types, although the risk is lessened with residential rents/sales proven in the residential district created in phase one.

Development Analytics of Revised Scheme: Construction costs (left: purple most expensive, cream least expensive), sales/rental price point (center: red most expensive, cream least expensive), and resultant profit spreads for the revised scheme, right.

Single Family Houses SINGLE AND DUPLEX HOUSES IN MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners; Developed by Clark Construction and the US Navy

Single family housing remains an integral part of the American Dream. A detatched home represents success for many, but increasingly there is a yearning for the convenience and cultural diversity that comes from living in the city. An exhaustive compendium of single-family housing types, let alone regional varieties, serving this constituency is beyond the scope of this volume. However, there are many â€œbread-and-butterâ€? types that have proven to be the backbone of much of the good "new" walkable urbanism of the past 20 years by being repeatedly built in community after community; these are included in the pages that follow. In addition a select group of innovative house types that help to solve unique or unusual urban realm conditions is included in this section. Alleys and lanes are critical to the design strategy for walkable neighborhoods. Alleys and lanes allow parking and servicing (trash removal, utilities, etc.) to be accessed from

the rear, reduce curb cuts and make a better pedestrian experience at the front door, while increasing the amount of on-street parking spaces. There is a place for non-alley served housing types: at the rural end of the transect spectrum; for edge conditions in master plans that are not alley served; or for corner or key lots, or other unusual site conditions where a driveway or shared driveway can assist in providing housing that contributes to the street wall and urban definition. Single family housing can host a panoply of architectural styles to suit community needs, as best compiled in A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia and Lee McAlester.1 A broader selection of house plans can be found in numerous plan compilation resources.2

Mansion Lot without Alley

Large edge house lots in Kentlands, Gaithersburg, MD, Various Architects, Masterplanned by DPZ, Developed by Joseph Alfandre & Company.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Lot Width: Threshold Land Value:3

3 units per acre N/A 60â€™ and greater $0/SF; $0/acre

Construction Type: Typical Building Height: Cost per GSF (2010):4 Cost per Unit (3,500SF): Erection Time:

Wood, typically IRC 3 stories, 40â€™ $60-$75/GSF (w/o land) $245,000/unit+/- (w/o land) Fast

Parking Solution:

Driveway access to garage pad

Positive Attributes:

Classic appearance and/or stylistic freedom. Maximum flexibility in program arrangement. Minimal interaction with neighbors. Exposure to light and air. Porches. Adaptability for additions.

Negative Attributes:

Land and building inefficiency. Difficult to serve with proximate public transportation. More vehicle miles traveled.

There is an infinite range of large lot house types available for an architect to use. These larger houses are often set at the edge of a neighborhood, away from denser streets at the core, or occasionally on a prime site within an overall masterplan. Numerous plan resources exist for larger-lot housing products, which compile many single-family plans and lot types.2 Often these edge types are front driveway loaded. Picket fences and hedges serve to screen these driveways and reinforce the separation between the public, semi-public, and private space, particularly from an oblique view looking down the street, where these design devices make driveways disappear, and reinforce the pedestrian over the vehicle. Careful sidewalk and verge landscape design further reinforce the pedestrian realm. On larger mansion lots, the garage may face the side and not directly toward the street so that the doors do not overwhelm the public way. Land efficiency can be improved by sharing driveways between neighboring houses and facing garages toward the side and not directly toward the street, or having detached garages at the rear of the lot. Houses on narrower lots often have the doors of the attached garage directly facing the street and set back at least 10-12 feet from the face of the house so that the house form dominates the street rather than the garage, again reinforcing the pedestrian over the vehicle.

1”=500’

A typical suburban landscape of large homes “McMansions”5—on quarteracre or half-acre lots with no sidewalks, cost-driven grading, and driveways dominating the public front yard.

Relative Scale

Celebration, FL. These homes, the largest in their neighborhood, are built along a greensave where they achieve the highest sale prices in the community, broaden product diversity for the developer and faster lot absorbtion.

Plans

Structure During Construction

First Floor

This home in construction is nearly watertight, allowing installation of drywall and finishes inside, even before the exterior finishes are applied to the roof and facades.

Second Floor

On Architectural Style

Site Plan

As with every plan type in this book, architectural style is not dictated by the plan. Mansion sized houses can be a wide range of styles and their size allows for greater articulation of styles than found in smaller houses. While this gives opportunity for individual expression, it is still important to ensure the house addresses the public realm.

Detatched Houses

Aerial Photo

Missed Opportunity

Townhouses and Terrace Homes

TOWNHOUSES, MAPLE LAWN FARMS, HOWARD COUNTY, MD

Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners; Developed by Mitchell & Best

Attached townhouses and rowhouses are basic “building blocks” of urban neighborhoods, and have been long before the advent of the automobile. Neighborhoods of primarily standalone single-family residences, no matter how tightly packed, do not typically have enough density to support walkable retail uses, so incorporating townhouses allows for the viability of a cafe or small convenience retail store nearby. Townhouses also have a light parking load for the amount of block perimeter they provide, which allows them to be used to complete the perimeter of urban blocks with more intensive parking loads, such as multifamily buildings and low-intensity commercial space. Townhouses are easy to develop and are efficient in achieving the most density per acre of any fee-simple housing type. Because of the ease of development, one of the big challenges for crafting urbanism is avoiding the creation of dull rectilinear grids with too much of the same type in one place.

Townhouses can come in many shapes and sizes. They usually have a “front” and a “back,” the front for greeting the community and the back, accessed off of an alley for service, loading, and the storage of vehicles. In extremely urban areas of older cities such as Tokyo and Philadelphia, some townhouses have been built that are 8’ wide, in order to fill the gaps that remained after the city built up around them. Today, townhouses are conventionally built at a minimum of two stories, between 16’ and 25’, with the wider units tending to be more luxurious and the narrower ones viewed as more economical. Crafting the frontages is key for livability; the use of stoops to raise the ground floor to create privacy and the right landscape materials and depth make for a pleasant public realm. Townhouses can solve urban planning goals with innovative strategies. They can be grouped together as one identity to segue to larger buildings in the nearby urban design, or stand in pairs as duplexes to relate to adjacent larger single-family homes.1

Tuck-Under Townhomes

Portnerâ€™s Landing, Alexandria, VA, Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by Madison Homes.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Lot Width: Threshold Land Value:

16-40 units per acre 44'x120' (tuck-under) 12'-30' $10/SF; $442,000/acre (estimated)

Construction Type: Typical Building Height: Cost per GSF (2010): Cost per Unit (800-2,000SF): Erection Time:

Wood, typically IRC 3 stories, 40 feet $70-$125/GSF (w/o land)

Parking Solution:

Rear alley-loaded tuck-under garage

Positive Attributes:

Land efficient. Fee-simple product. Low maintenance.

Negative Attributes:

No back yard. Close quarters. Tuck-under parking does not allow for a rear yard. Rear views from the townhouses are into a common service court.

108

$55,000-$250,000/unit+ (w/o land) Fast

Tuck-under townhouses provide ground-level rear-access garages tucked into the building footprint. Parking is accessed off the street, from a common service court/alley. This design allows for a dense urban fabric consistent with the urban patterns and textures of many historic neighborhoods, while providing the vehicle parking necessary for a modern home. Rear alleys must be attractive to entice purchasers of tuck-under townhouses, and ideally should appear more like an internal block plaza or amenity than a service lane. Without such care, these internal lanes can appear sterile and unappealing, providing less than ideal rear views for the residents.

Aerial Photo

The tuck-under townhouse is able to efficiently achieve high densities with internal parking. Unfortunately, it is often used to pack as many townhouses as possible on a piece of land.

Lakelands, Gaithersburg, MD

1”=500’

Townhouses Alexandria, Virginia

Tuck-under townhomes are used in these two neighborhoods to define an urban grid, while maximizing the number of self-parked residences. In Alexandria, the historic fabric segues to a podium townhouse court building and then to tuck-under townhouses of various widths.

Structure During Construction

Plans

Ground Floor

Relative Scale

Missed Opportunity

Second Floor

Third Floor

Loft

This tuck-under townhouse under construction shows the incorporation of private open space on top of the garage, as well as a top floor deck behind the mansard roof.

Design Considerations

A large deck spanning the garage entrance provides private open space behind tuck-under townhouses.

While the street frontage is critical for the perceived quality of a tuck-under townhome, the rear alley is more important than usual because the rear windows look directly out onto it. Well designed alleys can add significant value. Compare the trees, brick paving, privacy fencing, and decks on the right to the forlorn alley to the left.

109

Stacked Residential Units

OPEN COURT DUPLEX TERRACE UNITS CENTERGATE BALDWIN PARK , ORLANDO, FL

Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by Pritzker Residential LLC

For quality communities, stacked housing types are invaluable. They add density supporting retail and other uses that would otherwise not exist with townhouses or singlefamily housing alone. While providing density, they can masquerade as single-family homes, townhouses, or as apartment buildings, fitting into whatever community character is appropriate. In the hands of a good architect, they can segue and bridge neighborhoods between fee-simple housing types and multifamily apartment building types. Often, particularly in the case of the English Basement, these are fee-simple properties where the second unit (typically the downstairs unit) is leased out for additional income. Therefore, this housing type can allow for a rental population in a community that is vetted by the prime homeowners, and not by an anonymous rental corporation without local ties. More recently, these mixed-tenancies are

constructed with the intention that they be sold as condominiums from the start. The two-over-two product type has been used as both a rental and for-sale product. Sometimes, these kinds of housing start their life as rental units, but are then converted to condominiums at a later time, particularly in successful neighborhoods. Sadly, zoning rules in many communities proclude the inclusion of these housing forms. They also tend to be viewed as too small and too risky as investments for institutional capital. For these reasons, these types have been referred to as the â€œMissing Middleâ€? of American Housing.1

Two-Flats /Stacked Flats (one over one)

West Rock Neighborhood, New Haven, CT, Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by Michaels Development.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Lot Width: Threshold Land Value:

11-45 units per acre 60'x220' 20'-32' $15/SF; $667,000/acre (estimated)

Construction Type: Practical Building Height: Cost per GSF (2010): Cost per Unit (900SF): Erection Time:

Wood, typically IRC. 3 stories, 35 feet $80-$125/GSF (w/o land) $70,000-$115,000/unit (w/o land) Fast

Parking Solution:

Rear alley-loaded garage or pad space

Positive Attributes:

Allows for more density than standard townhouses. Low price point for home ownership. Provides variety for multifamily communities. Can be integrated into single family neighborhoods, to provide additional density to support restaurants other commercial uses.

Negative Attributes:

122

Existing single-family neighborhoods may be resistant to the introduction of these types. These buildings create similarly-sized units; they would need to be combined with other types to provide variety in the overall unit mix

Salishan, Takoma, WA, Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by Tacoma Housing Authority

This building type is simply a single housing flat, accessed by a stair over another flat which has direct access to the public way. Many single-family homes in older neighborhoods of “rust belt” urban areas have been converted to stacked flats. In Cleveland or Milwaukee, for example, the building address for the unit is simply “3260 Naimesmith Road, Up” or “3260 Naimesmith, Down.” This type has been built as rental and for-sale product. Stacked flats can start their life as rental buildings, but then be converted to condominiums. They can be easily crafted to fit seamlessly into either a townhouse or single-family streetscape, or alternately segue from a more dense multi-family neighborhood to single-family uses.

1”=500’

Stacked flat units are often used in mixed-type affordable housing neighborhoods to meet the requirements for a percentage of accessible units. In this case, the large graphics for the accessible parking space overwhelm the urban realm.

Relative Scale

Salishan, Tacoma, WA. Stacked flats anchor the corner sites of this mixed-type neighborhood, segueing to larger buildings.

Structure During Construction

Construction photos exposing structure (feature project, facing page).

Floor Plans

OPT A: First Floor

OPT A: Second Floor

OPT B: First Floor

OPT B: Second Floor

In the plans of Option A, the upper flat is accessed via a stair off the side porch. The plans of Option B are for a duplex of stacked flats, containing 4 units, similar to the feature project, where three units enter off the street frontage (two by a shared porch) and one upper unit is accessed from the side.

123

Stacked Residential Townhouses

Aerial Photo

Missed Opportunity

Multi-family Residential CENTERGATE BALDWIN PARK, ORLANDO, FL

Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by Pritzker Residential left: MICROUNIT RESIDENTIAL BUILDING, 38 HARRIET ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA Trachtenberg Architects & Lowney Architecture, Developed by Panoramic Interests

Most multi-family projects today are created by large multinational corporations or Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). As a commodity, there are 23,000 investment grade rental apartment communities across the United States,1 and over 5,000,000 condominiums.2 They are traded per very specific economic performance criterion ($rent/SF/NOI), expected market growth, etc. Much market research goes into the unit mix that is delivered with a new rental housing complex; the speed of the initial unit market absorbtion is critical to the financial success. This often leads to a limited unit range; a healthy mix of one-bedroom units and two-bedroom “roomate” units, where the bedrooms are provided privacy by being separated by the unit’s living areas. The communities built today tend to have standardized amenities: a fitness room, mail center, a community room with kitchen, a pool, and maybe a communal jacuzzi. Condominiums and apartments built today tend to have washers and dryers inside the

units; in the past there was a separate onsite (or off-site) laundry facility. Apartments in more urban or collegiate areas tend to have a higher proportion of studios and onebedroom units, and are often arranged as stair-accessed “walk-up” projects, or through elevators and internal corridors. When built for rental housing, apartment projects often have 200-300 units, which is an ideal size to optimize leasing, management, and operations costs for an apartment community. Because they need to be able to be bought and sold by their developer owners and the investment funds that finance the projects, in the past it has been extremely difficult to propose departures from the standard formulas that might make better places, such as intermixing stacked typologies into rental communities. Today many developers are seeking market differentiation and are pursuing the inclusion of more unit types that are responsive to urban conditions that result in more charming and authentic results, and ultimately higher rents.

12-Unit Walk-up Apartment Building

Hawthorne Neighborhood Hope 6 (former MLK housing), Philadelphia, PA, Architect: Torti Gallas + Partners, Developed by the Philadelphia Housing Authority and Pennrose Properties.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Lot Width: Threshold Land Value: Construction Type: Practical Building Height: Cost per GSF (2010): Cost per Unit (600SF avg.): Erection Time:

25 units (parking lot); 70 units (transit) per acre 140'x180' 60' $10/SF; $442,000/acre (estimated) Wood, typically IBC R-2 Type V 3 stories, 40 feet $85-$115/GSF (w/o land) $55,000-$87,000/unit (w/o land) Somewhat fast

Parking Solutions:

Alley accessed lot, transit-dependant, or on-street

Positive Attributes:

Very land efficient. Allows for site density.

Negative Attributes:

146

Better rental housing than condominium, HOA/coop likely required. Common area maintenance. Minimal amenity if not part of a greater community.

The 12-unit walk-up is the smallest version of a walk-up multi-family building â€“ essentially one tier of what is usually assembled in sequence (see walk-up garden apartments). It is therefore slightly more expensive: the exterior envelope of the building is, therefore, required to cover both sides of what is usually a party wall between tiers. But the units are better; they get additional sunlight and cross-ventilation from the windows on the side of the building. The ground-floor units should be accessible by wheelchair, otherwise an elevator is required. If an elevator is provided, then all units need to be accessible. A ground-floor trash room may be all that is required to serve these units.

Missed Opportunity

Aerial Photo

Phoenix, AZ. The cramped arrangement of the buildings on this site offers every unit a view of a parking lot and suburban large capacity roadways.

Hawthorne neighborhood, Philadelphia, PA. This infill 12-unit building plugs a gap in the neighborhood fabric.

Typical Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

1”=500’

Mechanical Requirements for Residential/ Hotels and Impact on Exteriors

There are a number of mechanical systems that are in use today for multi-family residential types, particularly low and mid-rise residential. Some systems use condensers on the roof or on the ground to release heat, but cost-conscious developers often use through-wall units, which challenge the quality of the public realms. These come in two types: closet-housed vertically oriented systems and PTAC (packaged terminal air conditioner) cabinet units. Each of these through-wall units force elements of very specific proportions, which designers have to incorporate into their facade designs. For example, standard PTAC units are 16"x42" wide and typically sit below a window opening that is forced into a rather squat proportion.3 Facades are further challenged by distance requirements between exhaust vents and windows/intakes often awkward designs result. In addition, placing mechanical units at the exterior perimeter wall limits usability of the most valuable space on the interior of the building that may place the project at a competitive disadvantage to neighboring projects that bury the mechanical units toward the center of the building (with rooftop equipment), and therefore maximize perimeter value by locating active uses there rather than mechanical equipment.

Multifamily Residential

Plans

Relative Scale

In this construction photo (of 3A type), note awkward holes for mechanical units

147

24' Wood Parking Lot Liner Buildings

North Street Mashpee Commons, Mashpee, MA, Imai/Keller Architects, Masterplanned by DPZ, Developed by Cornish Associates.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Land Threshold Value:

8,000SF per acre (considering parking) 24'x44' $8/SF; $350,000/acre (estimated)

Construction Type: Practical Building Height: IBC Type V, Wood Construction Cost per GSF (2010): 1 story, 25 feet Cost per Building (1,500SF): $96-$120/GSF (excluding tenant fit-out) $145,000-$180,000 Erection Time: Fast Parking Solution:

Screened parking lot and on-street

Positive Attributes:

Can hold the street edge and activate it with lively retail; minimal land requirement.

Negative Attributes:

Lack of upper floors limits density and potential long term customer base for retail tenants. Also, retail is a scarce commodity and its potential for activating other uses is wasted in one-story buildings

172

The shallow-depth one-story liner retail building can be up to 14,000SF of unsprinklered wood construction, 56,000SF when sprinklered, and slightly more for office uses.3 If desired, and if security issues can be managed, it can have doors facing both the sidewalk of the urban realm and the parking areas it lines. These spaces will not typically support conventional retail and will require an overall leasing strategy to augment main tenancies. But many of the tenants that would occupy a supermarket-anchored neighborhood shopping center can occupy spaces within this type. Tenants whose rent could support this kind of space, but would struggle to pay the higher rents of a regional shopping center, include barbers, hair salons, insurance offices, real estate agents, title companies, specialized hobby shops, local restaurants, cafes, and specialized toy stores.

Mixed-Use Buildings BALDWIN PARK, ORLANDO, FL

Masterplanned by Torti Gallas and Partners, SOM. Building Design by Looney, Ricks, Kiss and others. Developed by New Broad Street Companies. left: TYPE VA PODIUM RESIDENTIAL OVER RETAIL BUILDINGS, WEST VILLAGE, DALLAS, TX

David Schwarz Architects, Developed by Phoenix Property Company.

More than any other building type, mixed-use buildings fulfill the mission of cities. The basic costs of residential mixed-use buildings vary based upon the construction type used, which depends on the height desired for the buildings. Wood buildings can generally be built up to four stories high (International Building Code, Type V), five when the perimeter is built with fire-protected materials and other safety measures such as automatic sprinkler systems are incorporated (IBC Type III). When built upon a multi-story concrete pedestal or podium, these four-tofive stories of wood can be built higher, above a concrete podium for as many stories as can be built under 85 feet (IBC Type III).1

Above that, for residential superstructures, light gauge metal buildings can be constructed economically to eight or nine stories on top of a concrete podium, and steel frame with precast plank, under the IBC Type IB construction classification, for a total of 12 stories, before the costs of lateral bracing make it less competitive with fire-protected steel (moment) frames and concrete construction. Beyond that height, the historically tested methods of IBC Type IA construction, protected steel frame and concrete frame, become the prime form-givers to cities, and are unlimited in height.2

Hybrid Court Combinations and Ensembles

Del Mar Station Transit Village, Pasadena, CA, Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, Developed by Urban Partners LLC./Archstone.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Land Threshold Value:

30-150 units per acre, 325,000SF/acre 60'x100' $50/SF; $2,150,000/acre (estimated)

Construction Type: Allowable Building Height: Cost per GSF (2010): Cost per Res. Unit (1,050SF):

Varies - each section is different Varies - each section is different $100-$175/GSF

Cost per Building (300,000SF): Erection Time:

$105,000-$180,000/unit $30,000,000-$52,500,000/building Somewhat slow

Parking Solution:

Transit, underground or adjacent screened parking structure.

Positive Attributes:

By varying the types, less expensive types can be introduced into a mixed-use project. Much more sophisticated urban design results.

Negative Attributes:

More complexity, and more difficult to manage by contractor(s) than one-type buildings. The better solutions are customcrafted to their respective sites and therefore more expensive to design.

230

Courtyard housing is essentially a mid-density type, where units tend to have strong connections to the courtyards. As buildings get taller and more massive, when they surround a court they become something different. However, many assemblages exist that marry elevator served corridor buildings to less intensive types, and form courts and a strong urban design from the result. All the types in this book can be combined in creative ways to make assemblages that sell a community vision. Good walkable neighborhoods are effectively these combinations, and nothing precludes a creative developer and design team from establishing community by the use of decipherable community typologies. By doing this, ownership transfers from the developer and architects to the community, who then can build upon the prior efforts to further their sense of community identity.

Aerial Photo

To get to the station from this transitadjacent mixed-use development, one has to walk 600 feet between a highway off-ramp and railway tracks and then pass below a highway.

Relative Scale

1”=500’

Missed Opportunity

South Pasadena, CA. This transit-oriented development creates a core of a neighborhood at the station, creating a place from which the community can further grow.

Plans and Section

Design Considerations

This image shows how a single development project uses multiple types to achieve urban design goals and create real estate value. A large corridor building (yellow and red building) is humanly scaled down to existing context by the use of stacked and townhouse housing (gray forms). Courtyards are formed between these types.

Plan of belowgrade parking

These images show spaces between the assembled building forms. The image on the right shows the transit arrival plaza. The left image presents the transit station access from the historic highway frontage. At the center is a more private, urban court between the building forms.

Site section showing below-grade parking

231

Mixed-Use

Plan diagram indicating different building types on the ground.

Public Buildings NANCY LEE AND PERRY R. BASS PERFORMANCE HALL, SUNDANCE SQUARE DISTRICT, FORT WORTH, TX

David Schwarz Architects, Built by Performing Arts Fort Worth

Before World War II, many institutional buildings were constructed to express permanence and perhaps even last into perpetuity. Some of these were residential, many were factories, but the majority were pubilc buildings. Since 1945, institutional buildings have been designed with a much shorter lifespan, where â€œfirst costâ€? concerns have become paramount. Few commercial or industrial buildings built today have a civic presence as they often did in the past. Even public projects have not been immune to this pressure. Community pride often takes a back seat to the more persistent issues of cost effective construction, keeping tax rates down, meeting legal mandates from the state or federal level, limiting schooling costs, and maintaining crumbling infrastructure. Many public buildings are today located in drivable sububran environments where surrounding buildings are designed to minimal, even disposable, standards to meet requirements of the marketplace, where tax considerations like depreciation are critical determinants of design. Public buildings can

be destinations that enliven and energize their communities and can be anchors for a healthy walkable environment. Public buildings face many challenges today in creating dignified contributions to walkable communities. There are often interior program requirements for blank walls, force protection security standards, onerous parking requirements and/or, often a lack of direct community-serving uses that can activate the ground floor of a building. Some say it is even fashionable to project weaker governmental institutions. Some projects with ample budgets allow opportunities for over-expression or aggrandizement. Often, when cities describe themselves to visitors in local maps, they orient the newcomers through the disposition of public buildings, which are often marked and highlighted, as opposed to the vernacular private-market buildings, which are typically shown as a monotone shade between the streets. The public building designs represented should dignify their civic purpose.

Fire Station

Issaquah Highlands Fire Station No. 73, Issaquah, WA, TCA Architecture and Planning.

Issaquah Highlands Fire Station No. 73, TCA Architecture and Planning.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Population Served:

15,000SF-80,000SF/acre 150'x150' 1,000-20,000 people (5,500 people/station US avg.)6

Construction Type:

Type I - concrete or steel frame construction

Range of Building Size: Cost per GSF (2010): Cost per Building (10,000SF):

5,000SF-20,000SF $150 (open shop) $290 (union) /GSF

Erection Time:

254

$1,400,000-$2,100,000 Somewhat slow

The over 46,000 fire stations and public safety centers in the United States come in a variety of sizes and organizational scales.7 On the smaller scale, volunteer organizations can have a neighborhood-sized station with limited equipment to serve very specific needs, say a paramedic vehicle and one fire and rescue vehicle capable of addressing a small structure fire. Eighty percent of fire and medical calls are for medical emergencies, so most smaller facilities include paramedic support. On the other end of the scale are large, professional public safety centers, with specialized offices addressing hazardous materials, calamity emergency operations/FEMA coordination, animal control, police, even voter registration and department of motor vehicle services. Most facilities (except very old ones), as critical infrastructure, are built to Type I building code standards. One of the biggest challenges is managing the vehicular ingress and egress to allow for quick response times but at the same time not overly burdening the urban realm with asphalt and concrete, particularly where departments demand both front and rear vehicular bay access. Often this is done by using corner sites with the building at the corner and driveways at the lot lines off of each street, and/or using alleys for vehicular access to the rear of the facility. Residential can be built adjacent to, even above, fire stations, when fire stations agree to limit siren usage within a certain radius of the station. This is becoming more common as neighborhoods react to excessive siren usage, and siren management plans are put in place by civic leaders under community pressure.

This fire station provides maximum exposure for the emergency vehicle circulation to the corner of this intersection. The entirety of the corner frontages is comprised of concrete paving. More paving is needed because of the large turning radii of emergency vehicles.

Relative Scale

1”=500’

Aerial Photo

Missed Opportunity

Mt. Laurel, AL. This new small fire station, like many historical examples, protects the urban realm by having the trucks back-in to their storage bays from only one curb cut.

Plans

This ground-floor plan shows how the truck bays are tucked behind the building mass.

Structure During Construction

Public Buildings

Design Considerations

The fire station shown in this site plan (image facing page) has double-ended vehicular parking bays preferred by many fire departments, but manages the resultant circulation loop by placing the majority of it behind the double-story building mass along the street.

Where land is expensive, workforce and affordable housing, as well as hotel rooms, can be placed above fire stations to serve community needs. Technological advances in window soundproofing have advanced where siren and street noise are unobtrusive. Operational systems can be put into place where firefighters can override nearby streetlights and remove any reason for siren use.

255

Police Station

Middletown Police Department (and ground floor retail/restaurant), Middletown, CT, Jeter, Cook & Jepson Architects.

Gross Site Density: Minimum Block Size: Population Served: Construction Type:

25,000SF-60,000SF/acre 150'x150' 500-25,000 people (10,500 people/station US avg.[est.])8 Typically, Type I or II - concrete block or steel frame construction; smaller stations can be Type V wood construction

Range of Building Size:

1,500SF-20,000SF

Cost per GSF (2010):

$170 (open shop) $300 (union) /GSF

Cost per Building (12,000SF): Erection Time:

256

$1,900,000-$2,950,000 Somewhat slow

Compared to other civic office buildings located within neighborhoods, police stations have distinctive needs. They require heightened security and good sight lines, since they deal with (and temporarily hold) offenders on a regular basis. At the same time, police stations should also welcome the neighborhood: in many areas, community-policing beat meetings (as well as general community meetings) are held at local stations, and a facility that works with a community can set the tone for improved engagement. These buidlings can be sited in the center of town where the stations are easily accessible on foot by the constituency served. The suburban notion is to consolidate police into larger patrol bases, as opposed to creating police storefronts and substations, which are part of an effort to make officers neighborhood-based and closer to the community. Surface parking is often necessary for police facilities, since police departments have large fleets that require quick access to the street network. The parking storage can be placed in the center of urban blocks screened by other uses. Multiple egress paths from the parking area to multiple streets can help reduce bottlenecks and improve response times.

This police station is contained in a building comprised of imposing masses, a questionable design choice given concerns of approachability and receptiveness of police forces to the populace they serve. This police fortress is the physical embodiment of law and order, a product of professional detachment, of an inurement and hardening to the public.

Relative Scale

1”=500’

Middletown, CT. This police station extends Main Street with active uses and an appropriate civic presence.

Plan This plan shows a public community meeting room at the entrance of the station (yellow), to foster interaction between police and citizens.

Design Considerations The image at the right shows the large parking field required at the rear of the Main Street police station, featured opposite and below right, which is screened by that building from the public realm.

Public Buildings

Compared to the building above, this police station almost has the opposite problem, having almost no presence, and lacking approachability. It is also not serviced by public transportation or sited on a local arterial roadway.

Aerial Photo

Missed Opportunity

This police station was designed to welcome in the community, placed on the street with a playful composition including residential building forms and street glazing to be more inviting. It also integrates community policing with a community court facility serving as a social service referral point. A public meeting hall along the lobby allows for informal interaction between police and the community.

This police station (entrance pictured) is situated on Main Street with a ground floor restaurant tenant, and a warm picturesque tower reflective of a former tower lost from the city’s history. The restaurant tenant allows for casual interactions between officers and the public.

257

Mobility and Access Options RIO VISTA STATION & THE PROMENADE AT RIO VISTA, SAN DIEGO, CA

Masterplanning - Calthorpe Associates, Building Design - MVE Architects Developed by The Greystone Group

Transportation choices have consequences. How a community gets to places has an impact on the quality of life. Two-thirds of suburban land in commercial and retail areas is dedicated to parking. In the cores of cities, land is so scarce that the main transportation rail conduits are placed underground where they detract minimally from the active use of real estate above. The decision to invest in a new transportation system is influenced by perceived land value and, once implemented, new transportation modes greatly affect land value. New transit investments unlock and augment value, while fostering community growth. Investment in public sector transit minimizes required investments of the private sector for mobility, like structured parking, reducing the overall cost of housing, and generally, of conducting business. But development in drivable suburban realms can organize parking storage in ways that do not hamper walkability and create long term community value similar to downtown transitserved locations. This section compiles a variety of storage solutions for private vehicles

that allow for walkable connectivity at a variety of building scales. Beyond managing the car and private vehicles, this section also compiles more urbane transportation modes, including pedestrian amenities, bike infrastructure, bus and rail transit systems, and begins to explore their contributions to healthy neighborhoods. For transit types, a more in-depth consideration of station and stop configurations can be found in the Transit Street Design Guide by the National Association of City Transportation Officials. There are greater and subtle social considerations beyond the physical realm. Owning a particular car or even a bicycle can be equated to an individualâ€™s sense of identity and status. An automobile is liberating and empowering along a rural roadway, providing mobility, and limiting and confining in the heart of a city center, with high cost insurance and restricted parking. A casual conversation is more likely to be spontaneously sparked when friends pass along a campus pathway on foot as opposed to when one glides by on a bicycle. Clearly, mobility choices impact a community even at the smallest social scale.

Parking Stackers/Lifts

Parking stackers in Panoramic Interests Projects, Berkeley, CA.

Land Inefficiency vs. TOD: Cost per Space (2010): Cost per GSF (180SF/space):

65-97% $10,000-$18,000+

Positive Attributes:

Space efficiency.

Negative Attributes:

Lack of familiarity. Takes more time to access vehicle.

314

$35-$60+/GSF

Stackers can be used effectively to activate the value of narrow lots (See Berkeley Block), maximizing the vehicle storage capacity of drive aisles, in a minimal plan area. They also can be used to extract further economic value from a parking lot in urban locations, extending its useful economic return as a storage use, by allowing a parking lot to hold more cars, even though, as a storage use, the lot is contributing minimal activity and life toward the public realm. The stackers can allow for independent access by vehicle operators, without need for an attendant. For safety, most stackers operated by the public access vehicles with a key or button which has to be actively held in an open position while lifting or lowering vehicles, minimizing the potential of inadvertently harming someone. Stackers interface with the drive aisle in a variety of ways. Some are built on grade flush with the aisle and allow a car to be lifted up, which then frees the lower space in order to store an additional vehicleâ€”however stranding the top car until the lower car is removed. This is useful to expand storage in a residential garage where the upper vehicle may be a classic car only used only on special occasions. Others utilize a pit that allows cars to be stored while providing constant access for any car. There are also options that allow for 3 cars: up, center, and down, again utilizing a double-height pit adjacent to the drive aisle. Pit solutions require much less excavation than a conventional garage, which would typically require excavation for the aisle access as well. There are many manufacturers of stackers, which come in a range of costs and durability, some for single-family residential uses and others which are specifically for commercial applications. There are numerous permutations of stackers not shown here, some that tilt in conditions with tight ceilings or pit-based stackers that allow the surface of the top level of the stacker to be used as part of a paved outdoor room, court, lawn, garden or for other alternative uses.

Aerial Photo

Relative Scale

1”=500’

Missed Opportunity

Berkeley, CA. A number of the buildings in the images above have been designed using parking stackers to increase the amount of residential density that can be built based upon parking limitations.

Much like parking lots, stackers are utilitarian storage devices, and are viewed by many as unattractive. These stackers are surface mounted, requiring the lower cars to be removed when access is needed for an upper vehicle.

Design Considerations

Drive

Aisle

Drive

Aisle

These two stacker systems are floor mounted. Because they do not incorporate a pit, the cars stacked above the car on the ground are blocked-in until the car at the ground level is moved out of the way. The three-level stacker (right) requires more ceiling height than the two-level stacker. There are also special two-level stackers designed for limited ceiling height conditions. (Images courtesy Klaus Multiparking)

Drive

isle

A ve

Pit

Dri

Aisle

Pit

These two stacker systems utilize a pit adjacent to the drive aisle. The pit allows vehicle access for all vehicles at all times, without having to relocate cars parked below yours. A three-level stacker (right) not only needs more ceiling room, but a two story pit, as opposed to the one-story pit required for the two-level stacker (left). (Images courtesy Klaus Multiparking)

This series of photographs show the full movement of access allowed by a stacker incorporated into a pit. With a pit, a person can park a car anywhere on the stacker and can access the vehicle in the future at any time.

315

Mobility and Access

The Berkeley Block’s ground floor level has a parking garage with a combination of stackers and puzzle lifts/parking machines to activate the real estate value of its parcel. What would normally be 28 spaces of conventional single-floor parking is converted to 69 spaces of parking available within the building. In the garage plan (above) deep maroon spaces represent three-level lifts, deep magenta indicates two-level lifts, and pink colors single-level conventional spaces, like the accessible spaces in the lower left of the garage. Because these are parking facilities with assigned parking for those who develop a familiarity with the garage, dead-end aisles are acceptable.