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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

That sounds great! The thing I love most about living in a house is the prospect of “engineering space” - places to do carpentry, electronics, home maintenance etc.

Living in an apartment (assuming adequate noise isolation) is actually great otherwise.

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Would a space in the center of an office tower really have enough air ventilation for ordinary hobby-maker work like sanding, soldering, painting, resin molding, grinding, etc?

Considering what some people do with basement spaces and almost no ventilation at all, I'm going to hazard a guess that a windowless interior room is not a dealbreaker.

Plus the fact that the commercial space that's being converted was often used for this sort of thing already anyway. Yes, this is mostly office space, but many engineering firms have an electronics lab or small prototyping workshop in their "office" space.

If anything with large towers, I wouldn't be surprised if the HVAC is routed adjacent of the elevator shafts in the center of the floor.

Offices have ventilation. They are usually more densely manned than apartments.

Unless they specifically tear it down during redevelopment (why would they?), there should be plenty of air circulation.

If you read the OP you will see that in one example that’s exactly what they do do - in order to reclaim the space occupied by HVAC and turn into more apartments!

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