America’s housing designs have put cost ahead of aesthetics and have created entire cities of cookie cutter apartments.
If you think every apartment community these days looks pretty much the same, you’re not wrong. It’s not just your imagination—since 2009, America’s housing designs have put cost ahead of aesthetics and have created entire cities of cookie cutter apartments.
While using the same layout design for every project puts more money in the pockets of contracts and developers, is the design homogeneity of apartments across the country really what’s best for America’s struggling housing market?
WHAT’S THE FIVE-OVER-ONE PLAN?
Take a walk down almost any city and you’ll see the exact same apartment community design. The construction design goes by many names: five-over-one, one-plus-five, podium buildings, wraps, or the Texas Doughnut. Whatever the name, they all follow the same rigid design specifications. Depending on the city’s building codes, they may require a modulated and varying exterior to avoid design repetition—but other than that, the structure is the same no matter the city you’re in.
Five-over-one buildings are a type of multifamily, mid-rise building. They’re constructed with four or five wood-frame stories building on top of a concrete foundation. This style of building construction became popular in 2009 after a change to the International Building Code. The revision allowed up to five stories of wood-framed construction instead of the previous limitation.
Image: Pixabay
