Removing the first two floors of apartment buildings

Just watched an interested Ted Talk, where the architect talked about how the value of the first couple of floors was lower than the upper floors. Additionally, the wide footprint of a building made for less area to put landscaping. Check out this interesting design:

(If it does not go there, directly, skip to minute 14)

Thanks for sharing, this is so interesting! I actually think the design is really very beautiful... kind of ethereal...

I thought that the curling drawbridge was pretty cool too....

Hey Brent,

Thanks for sending this over. You know, maybe its because I started my carreer as an architect, but I really love seeing solutions that creative folks come up with around the world. A lot of times we look at these designs and ask- well if it works in Malaysia, then what about here? Truth be told, there is one primary reason for it:

1) Money. There are so many countries around the world where land is limited. Of course as density increases, land values skyrocket. We have that condition in limited areas of a half dozen cities...maybe.

So for the type of structure that was shown in the renderings, you can only achieve that with high-rise construction. Aesthetic aside, bowing a building out like that is going to be costly. Cool- but costly. So if we were ever to see something like that happen...it would be in for sale product...and not for rent.

Of course I have no sense for ownership rights in Malaysia, but the regular folks likely cant afford land- and renting for life, might be the norm.

I think that you will be hard pressed to find a developer in the US that would value the greenspace in a way that they would go through the extra cost of creating a mushroom building...unless it was a city requirement.

Very cool though- thank you for sharing.