Architects Mike Mariano and Grace Kim in the rooftop garden of Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing in Seattle, Wash., where they live with their daughter, on Aug. 10.Genna Martin
Mike Mariano and partner Grace Kim lived for several years in a 12-storey condo project in Seattle’s Belltown neighbourhood, not thrilled with the feel of it.
It was a conventional apartment building, with long, lightless hallways down the middle of each floor, each unit with a window on just one end, building rules that dictated no personalization of any kind on individual doors, and little communication with other residents.
Now, things are much different for Mr. Mariano and his family. They have windows on two sides of their apartment, one of which faces an interior courtyard that they can see (and hear the activity of) from the kitchen.
“I absolutely love it when the weather is good. I can hear the sounds of life around me,” says Mr. Mariano.
He and Ms. Kim, both principals at the Seattle architecture firm Schemata Workshop Inc., live with their teenager in a building that, for almost a century, has been deemed illegal in Canada and much of the U.S.
It’s a small co-housing apartment complex – nine units with some commercial space on the bottom where the two operate their architecture firm – that is designed with only a single staircase to the outside.
A communal P-Patch garden on the roof of Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing in Seattle, Wash. (Photo by Genna Martin)Genna Martin
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Opinion: How changing an old rule about stairs could unlock a lot of new housing
But B.C. is about to make that kind of design – sometimes called single stair, sometimes single egress, sometimes point-access block – legal again by this fall, according to the province’s housing minister, Ravi Kahlon.
That change is being heralded by pro-housing advocates as a move that will allow a much needed new type of development that is more affordable and more able to be taken on by small builders, with better access to light and ventilation, better design, and better scale for integration with the province’s many existing single-detached-house neighbourhoods.
“It really unlocks housing because it allows you to develop a higher density on really small lots,” says another builder of single-stair apartments in Seattle, Matt Hutchins, a principal at CAST Architecture. “You get comfortably scaled apartments.”
Jansen Court Apartments, a single staircase multi-unit building in Seattle. Design by Cast Architecture.Cast Architecture
The push to allow single-stair apartments is part of the larger pro-housing movement that has emerged in the U.S. and Canada over the past decade, as advocates, especially younger ones frustrated by the skyrocketing cost of homes, have taken up the fight to get cities to stop putting barriers in the way of more housing and more varieties of housing.
Jansen Court Apartments.Cast Architecture
Much of their attention has been focused on issues like changing the zoning prevalent in many cities that bans apartment buildings from most residential areas or simplifying the complex rules and processes that cities have that slow down housing permits. But one tributary of their work has focused on the opportunities available with simple design changes, like allowing single-stair buildings.
Apartments with more than two storeys have been required to have double sets of stairs in Canada since 1941, a rule copied from 19th-century initiatives in American cities trying to increase safety in an era where fires were prevalent and fire-prevention strategies minimal.
That has resulted in a plethora of apartment projects across Canada that have been built with what is called double-loaded corridors: buildings with long, windowless hallways that have a stairway at each end. The result of that kind of design is that, except for corner units, all the apartments can have a window only at one end.
Conrad Speckert, at LGA Architectural Partners in Toronto, has been researching the issue and lobbying for change for years, pointing out that fire-prevention systems have evolved dramatically since 1941. As well, many other countries allow single-stair buildings, some up to 18 storeys. Mr. Speckert is currently working with others to try to get a change to the Canadian national building code.
In the meantime, B.C., which is on a mammoth, multipronged campaign to boost housing supply as a remedy to current crushing rent and house-buying costs, commissioned a study last year on the feasibility of allowing single-stair buildings.
The study by fire protection engineering firm Jensen Hughes noted that studies show that fires most typically start in residential kitchens, not stairways or public corridors. And those that do start there are usually small – the result of garbage piling up, for instance – and don’t spread far because of modern smoke-alarm and sprinkler systems.
A rendering of the Capital Hill Co-housing project in Seattle, Wash. The yellow represents the common areas that connect the community together in the building.schemata workshop inc.
The report said that single-stair buildings could be allowed for taller buildings, up to six storeys with four units per floor only, in places with good firefighting and water capacity, as long as a few additional provisions were made for suppressing any fires that might erupt in a stairwell. That’s similar to what Seattle’s rules are.
It also noted that the most likely cause of failure of safety systems is poor maintenance, which can happen in double-stair buildings as well as single-stair ones.
The impending B.C. legislation is not likely going to result in a wholesale transformation of all residential areas, say builders and architects both in B.C. and elsewhere. But it will help facilitate more buildings on smaller lots in neighbourhoods zoned for greater height.
“It would unlock small lots to immediately add some density,” says Denver architect Sean Jursnick, who is pushing for a Seattle-style code in Denver. He’s running a design competition to showcase potential models of single staircase buildings, similar to something the Vancouver group Urbanarium did this spring. “It allows for more incremental development in neighbourhoods where growth is happening.”
People from a Victoria company that won an award in the Urbanarium competition for their Switch project also talk about the potential of the new form.
“It’s going to take some developer willing to test the water and work with a few unknowns, but I think it will be popular,” said Chris Quigley, director of development at Aryze Developments. “It’s going to surprise people. As soon as people start proving out the numbers, it’ll take off.”
The company has two projects that it is assessing for the feasibility of doing a single-stair building once they are legalized in B.C. Mr. Quigley said municipalities that are already saying they’re willing to start looking at projects like that, even before the legislation is passed, will make it easier for things to take off.
He said one other advantage of the form is that it is tenure-neutral. It could result in projects that provide roomy and higher-end condo apartments for people wanting to downsize or it could produce smaller units that are rented or sold.
In Vancouver, famously experimental builder Bryn Davidson said that his second company, Oori Architecture, is poised to try it out.
Mr. Davidson said this form could work better, if it’s allowed on single lots, than the multiplexes that Vancouver and the province have legalized. Multiplexes can only be four to six units on a lot, depending on the lot size, whereas a small apartment building with a single stair could have as many as 24 units.
Jansen Court Apartments.Cast Architecture
Vancouver currently requires anyone building a small apartment to have a minimum of two lots, a holdover from when there was an assumption that underground parking would be needed. With cities eliminating minimum parking standards and more and more apartments built for people primarily using transit, that’s no longer necessary.
But the Vancouver rules mean that two lots have to be assembled and that typically forces potential builders to pay more than the standard price, as sellers realize they can hold out for more from developers trying to put a project together.
Builders who, for example, are trying to assemble lots for the towers now being allowed in the city’s massive effort at densification along its new subway line, the Broadway Plan, are typically paying almost double assessed value.
Vancouver staff have said, via their communications department, that they are looking at the provincial changes but were not prepared to talk yet about what the city might do.
Mr. Davidson said it will be important to allow the new form on single lots.
“I think most people don’t understand what the potential is,” he said. “This is a good in-between form of urbanism, allowing it on small lots, wood construction, without a big parkade.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of Conrad Speckert of LGA Architectural Partners. This version has been updated.