General Suburban Updates and Rumours

[ijmorlan]

Exterior stairs 

At least the Montréal ones have some character.

Would be curious to get your thoughts on the correct treatment for the stairs in this context, I did a quick google for Montreal stacked towns but didn't see a real consistent treatment in what was, admittedly, a pretty cursory review. 

Is it simply the provision of an overhang? I would think that doesn't accomplish a whole lot for snow/rain in any sort of windy conditions and I'm not sure pushing them into the building envelope is an option given my understanding of the building typology. 

The one with stairs leading all the way to the "second" floor seems a bit silly on its face, without understanding the relationship between floors, and it's odd to see the inclusion of garages with this typology. I honestly think the best solution for parking on these types of projects is to keep it on the surface. Maybe one day we will live in a world where we don't need the parking but that ain't KW2023.

I believe that snow shovelling of stairs should not be required in new construction. That pretty much summarizes my position. If you look at how much dirt they move in building a new subdivision, it is obvious that the relationship between main floor level and ground level at the front door is entirely controlled by the developer and therefore the relationship can be that they are at the same level. This is also good for accessibility, and fully answers the question for any non-stacked situation.

For stacked situations, I acknowledge that it may help with the flexibility of interior spaces to have exterior doors on various levels. This obviously requires exterior stairs to one or more levels. On the other hand, if you just enclose the stairs, the snow shovelling problem is solved permanently, and with it the combination of work / slip risk (depending on how diligently the steps are cleared).

In this particular development, I really don’t like the way the stairs are sort of islands sticking way out from the building into the driveway area. That seems likely to be especially unpleasant on a cold windy day. Even if they were against the building under a slight overhang it would be better.

Another thing to consider: I find it hard to believe that it’s really that hard to incorporate the stairs within the building. Sure, taking the existing proposal and just plunking the stairs inside the existing building, likely infeasible. But if the whole building is designed that way from the beginning, the expansion of building envelope is tiny — just enough to fit in the actual stairs. In a renovation, space is not fungible: if I want to expand a room by 30cm, it’s going to be impractical. But in new construction, it’s very different: take a typical house plan and revise it to expand a room by 30cm, and you’ll typically only make a proportional increase in construction expense.

Maybe it really is cheaper this way. But then again, what’s wrong with an apartment building? (other than Habitat, with its ridiculous 10th-story exterior corridors)

On the other hand, if people will buy/rent them…

One final comment: part of what makes me believe this is about cultural factors, not a necessary economic trade-off, is the existence of townhouses with a garage at ground level and the main floor above. The doors are a garage door at ground level and a regular door one floor up. Yet there is a staircase inside the building connecting the garage to the living floors. Why not just punch a person door through beside the garage door and dispense with the external stairs entirely? Not fancy enough? I’m talking about townhouses for working-class people, not the Supreme Court.

https://goo.gl/maps/pGEGYQJcs8wPguam9

E5 on campus at the University of Waterloo is an example of this in an institutional setting.