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Why Can't New Buildings Be As Nice As Old Buildings?
It's the ceiling heights, for one thing. •
by David Baker, FAIA
This article
first appeared in the May,
2004 SPUR Newsletter, p. 8.
One of the main things people like about
older San Francisco buildings is the taller ceiling heights,
both at the ground floor and the upper stories.
At the ground
floor, ceiling heights are a critical part of what makes
a retail space inviting and what makes a building feel
comfortable for pedestrians on
the sidewalk next to it. Many people have fond memories of old-fashioned retail
establishments with high ceilings and generous natural light here in San Francisco.
Typically, the older ground-floor retail spaces were a story and a half tall.
And indeed, many of these places still exist and contribute to our beloved
older neighborhood commercial streets.
Low ceilings make uninviting spaces
that rent for less, feel cramped, are less visible from the
street,
and don’t allow commercial uses to easily flourish.
For just these reasons, in new suburban malls and shopping centers, retailers
consider ceiling heights of 16 to 24 feet essential to the success of the stores.
And that is exactly what they build. Of course, taller ceiling heights are also required for light industrial uses
to be located on the ground floor of a building.
Tall ceiling heights are just
as important on the upper floors of a residential building. Pre-World War II
apartments in San Francisco have a well-deserved reputation
for feeling spacious and being filled with light. High ceilings are the design
element most often mentioned when people talk about what is special about San
Francisco’s historic apartments. These rooms often have ceilings as high
as twelve feet, compared with standard ceiling heights on new construction
today of eight feet. Instead of “gracious,” an adjective we hear
more often describing these spaces is “mean.”
The squashed ceiling
heights, found at both ground floors and upper floors of newer buildings,
make it very hard to achieve the feelings of space and
grace
appreciated so much in traditional buildings. Whether people are consciously
aware of this fact or not, it has a profound impact on the comfort one feels
in them.
These issues don’t come up in the suburbs, where all buildings
are more or less single story and where working, shopping, and living are
separated into “zones” that people drive between. In a city, where activities are mixed vertically in
the same building, it is critical to livability that multistory buildings
be designed
to feel comfortable.
Why can’t we design new buildings with the higher floor-to-ceiling
heights that we find on most older buildings? Both the answer and the solution
lie in
the relationship between the Planning Code and the Building Code.
Government
codes affect built form in unintended, and sometimes negative, ways
The
design of new buildings in San Francisco is influenced by
two sets of overlapping rules: first, the local San Francisco
Planning Code, written
and administered
by the San Francisco Planning Department; and second, the national Uniform
Building Code (UBC), administered by the San Francisco Building Department
but written
by the International Congress of Building Officials. Not surprisingly,
these
two codes have been written in isolation from each other. The interaction
between these codes unintentionally pushes buildings into a format of
low ceiling heights
at both the ground floor and upper floors, even when this is not desired
by neighbors, city planners, developers, architects, or the future residents
of
the building.
Presented here are case studies analyzing
the effects of 40-foot, 50-foot, and 65-foot Planning Code
height limits
on urban form, given the Building
Code strictures
which also must be met. In each case, the question is asked, what simple
adjustments can be made to the Planning Code to achieve the “highest
and best” interior
building spaces and exterior pedestrian realm? This article proposes
aligning the requirements
of the Planning Code with those of the Building Code in order to increase
the quality of the environment both within new buildings and in the public
realm
around them.
Such a change would require no change
in the Building Code but would instead calibrate the Planning
Code to the Building Code.
Recommendations
All the great cities
of the world achieve walkable, vital street life and convenience
in daily life by
mixing different uses in the same building. The vast majority
of the new development that takes place in San Francisco
is going to have multiple stories. To make that development
comfortable from the street, we would do best to build extra-tall
ground floor spaces, whether they are for shopping or for
doing other work. And to make the
upper stories
gracious and comfortable, we would do best building taller ceiling heights
as well.
In order to do this, the Planning Code
needs to regulate not just the total height of the buildings,
but the allowable
number of floors as
well, either by requiring
minimum ceiling heights that are taller than the Building Code currently
requires or simply setting a maximum number of floors that can be built
within a given
building height.
If we reduce the number of floors that
can be built within each of the current height districts,
one side effect would be the reduction of the total density
of new buildings—thereby
restricting housing supply and forcing development “somewhere else,” meaning
the periphery of the region. The better answer is to slightly bump up
the height limits, while allowing the same number of stories we allow
today. If nothing else, it is in the public interest to set a minimum
ceiling height on the ground level, which has the most direct impact
on the quality of the public realm, as experienced by pedestrians.
David
Baker, FAIA, is an architect experienced in creation of mixed-use and
residential projects throughout California. He is a member
of the SPUR Board of Directors and the SPUR Housing
Committee.
