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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I figured people were going to take issue with the opening anecdote about art, but that was simply the author trying to frame the story in an interesting way. The rest of the article was more compelling.

The ubiquity of the 5-over-1 architecture in the US is very striking. The NY Times had an article recently called "America the Bland" [1] which challenged people to tell if apartments were in Nashville, Seattle or Denver. All I could think looking through it was "These look exactly like all the apartments near me in Boston and Cambridge.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/realestate/housing-develo...

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5 over 1 is the result of regulations of various kinds converging resulting in economic pressures dictating that building format.

Also unless land is just atrociously expensive, the marginal cost of adding floors doesn't go down. In fact it really goes up at some point. I've still never actually worked out how sewage works in supertall buildings.

I'm no expert but sewage seems rather simple in a tall building. You have gravity on your side so you "just" need longer pipes.

Its getting the fresh water up that should get exponentially more difficult as building height increases.

It's not quite that simple. If you've ever lived in a tall building and heard/seen/smelled stories of sewer pipes backing up, well you'll know what I mean. The bottom floor of a 50 storey building needs much more sewage space than the bottom floor of a 5 storey building. Anyway, there are considerations about venting, as well as increased capacity for lower floors versus higher floors, and the whole thing has to be designed in conjunction with the rest of the plumbing anyway.

Try dropping a baseball from the 75th floor of a building and watch how hard it hits the ground. You can't just have a sewage vertical going up that high.

Sewage is far more difficult to handle than water.

You need to maintain a continuous downward slope. You are very limited in how you can have bends in pipes or two pipes join each other. You need to make sure air can get in and out of every point of the pipes, otherwise differences in air pressure will make things get stuck inside.

With pressurized water it just gets pushed wherever you route the pipes and you don't need to worry about the exact route nearly as much. Yeah, you need pumps to get the appropriate pressure on higher floors, but it's still simpler than sewage.

Freshwater, sewage, fire codes, elevators, foundations, load-bearing structures, HVAC all get more difficult as you add more floors (beyond some small number around 4 where it's all pretty trivial).

Another advantage 5-over-1s have (which the NYT article also mentions) is that they are cheap and easy to build. Very tolerant to cheap building materials, lots of prefabricated parts, lots of contractors who are familiar with how to build them. And because there's more demand then supply and people mostly pay based on location there's little incentive to do something more expensive

> lots of contractors who are familiar with how to build them

that's a bit circular, no?

You do what you're good at which you got good at by doing.

Yes, that's how economies of scale work

And those economic pressures include: at 5 floors, you can stickbuild the structure with relatively unskilled labor. External skins can make them look relatively different, but a single concrete floor with stores, and a structure that wraps around and hides the parking structure is, pragmatically, easy and cheap to build.

It's not the format that I'm referring to but the style.

The dominant architectural style of them includes:

- Multiple boxes merged into each other at different heights and depths

- Multiple (2-3) siding materials used in a regular pattern, such as vinyl slats + brick, or smooth aluminum + brick + cement.

- Multiple colors used in a regular pattern, usually white + gray + bright-primary-color. Primary color is used in small rectangular splashes, usually below or beside alternate windows

The basic look is that of many shipping containers nestled into each other.

That's also caused by design reviews and regulation that require "breaking up massing". So you get boxes jutting out and a mishmash of cladding materials.

My biggest gripe with 5 over 1's is the interior and the pricing. They're all cheap drywall with no insulation, quartz counter tops with an island and stainless steel appliances, and vinyl, wood grain flooring. They then claim that because they hit all of the "luxury" points, they are "luxury" apartments and can charge an extra $750 more than other apartments. In the end, all new apartments are like this, and beside location, basically interchangeable.

They're marketed as "luxury" because it's so hard to build new housing in the US. The luxury you're paying for is new construction. You're not going to get competition on materials used in housing until it becomes easy to compete on housing.

Kind of weird that you are calling out drywall here, what other building material makes sense for interior walls? And when you say no insulation do you mean in the interior for sound proofing? Exterior walls certainly have and require adequate insulation to be to code.

I'm reasonably certain it's an exaggeration on the authors part.

> I figured people were going to take issue with the opening anecdote about art, but that was simply the author trying to frame the story in an interesting way. The rest of the article was more compelling.

I don't disagree, but this is simply bad rhetoric. Don't start with an incorrect/misleading/confusing example, and then expect readers to stick with you for the more compelling stuff.

All housing waves produce cookie-cutter housing. Victorians all look like other Victorians, dingbats look like other dingbats, and brownstones look like other brownstones.

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