Interesting floor plan that shows what mitigations are possible that are not a second stair or sprinklers (neither of which are common in new apartment buildings in France). The lower floors have a short double-loaded corridor with five units of up to 4BR, which I... divisare.com/projects/548...

I’ve got an “Extraordinary threat to life and property” thanks to forecast lows that might dip below 40

Very interesting episode of The Daily about Delcy Rodríguez. I had not read anywhere else that she led a series of market reforms in Venezuela during and after the pandemic that seem to have worked (and I actually can’t really find anything else on it) open.spotify.com/episode/0Ynx...

Single-stair multifamily codes trend as states lean into affordability www.housingwire.com/articles/sin...

Context is US courts have ruled that standards organizations like the ICC lose their copyright on codes and standards once they are adopted into law, under the logic that you cannot copyright the law. ICC and others are trying to change that with the Pro Codes Act, which might make UpCodes illegal.

A lot of these are using noncombustible materials. I wonder if this reflects what’s actually being built in Altadena and the Palisades.

Wow sounds scary, this must be bad! I’ll have to click on it to find out what the severe weather is

In the topsy-turvy world of California housing policy, building six townhouses instead of a single McMansion will result in hundreds of thousands of "impact" fees that have nothing to do with impacts and "affordability" mandates that guarantee housing unaffordability.

Office space is the Elizabeth Line's bottleneck. The official evaluation shows jobs around Farringdon grew more slowly than London as a whole. But office rents increased twice as fast as the London average as office space actually fell. Demand increased but supply did not.

The Elizabeth Line hasn't increased commuting by as much as you might think. Even though Farringdon's tap-ins are up 64% from 2019 levels, displacement from the Central Line at Chancery Lane means total tap-ins for both are only up 18%. The reason is a lack of office space.

In German also eye (Treppenauge)

Fun fact: in Spanish the open space in the middle of the staircase is an eye (ojo de escalera).but in Italian it's a trumpet (tromba delle scale)

Firefighter injured when a window air conditioner fell on them during a fire in Ridgewood in Queens. Weird that we tolerate a/c units balanced on window frames above a brick if you’re lucky, but won’t allow minisplits secured onto facades. abc7ny.com/amp/post/2-f...

you will never find a double loaded corridor in our game as long as I live and breath and as long as players don't build it in their waystations

This type of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in many American cities (...incidentally, it's very legal in Spirit Crossing)

I’m not a big fan of office-to-resi generally, but especially not in DC, where the strict height limit and built-out downtown mean that there is basically no room for further office building. Not to mention that the floor plates are VERY deep and so there will be tons and tons of windowless bedrooms

The issue with each homeowner choosing their own level of wildfire protection is that a lot of the benefit of noncombustibility accrues not to you, but to your neighbor, since the structure of your home doesn’t contribute fuel load that threatens theirs

The FDNY's response to a five alarm fire in the Bronx was delayed by drivers who parked their cars in front of three fire hydrants closest to the blaze. Two firefighters and one civilian were injured.

The problem for transit advocates is that the system is genuinely very bad. The proposed solution is to effectively destroy transit, but mode share in the Metroplex is so low that voters aren’t going to really care.

First time I’ve seen talk in Romania of installing elevators in old buildings – they cite a cost of up to €60,000 per elevator, to be covered by EU funds. A politician says Romania has fewer elevators than any EU state (no way that is true in absolute terms…), with just 55,000

Despite the transit focus of Mayor Mamdani's first post-inauguration appearance with Gov. Hochul today, one issue noticably went unmentioned at the event: His plan to make NYC's public buses free (a proposal Hochul opposes). www.nydailynews.com/2026/01/05/a...

2Stair Hallways allow a burning unit with an open door to infect a massive number of units with smoke, and then force people to travel long distances through that smoke. The idea that this status quo is good / better than single stair is just crazy.

Minnesota has released it's #SingleStair report www.dli.mn.gov/sites/defaul... 129 pages of fire safety modelling, but my takeaway: 1. Well maintained sprinklers are important 2. Number of stairs isn't important 3. Hallways are the problem (and current code allows for crazy long hallways)

Bluesky’s seen a slight but noticeable uptick in users since Christmas Eve, I’m not sure why (the CSAM Elon Musk Event maybe?) bsky.jazco.dev/stats

Progress on elevator reform: a work group in Maine initiated by the state legislature and governor to find housing cost savings recommended cutting the state's elevator hoistway opening protection rules, and also the two-way visual communications requirement. Details on my website:

3D floor “plans” are an abomination and they bring shame upon our proto-Indo-European ancestors. A plan is flat.

as if on cue, Delgado comes out in support of a nonsensical two-person train operation mandate that would increase operational costs and reduce service. what a joke. also this tweet syntax screams chatGPT

Interesting video showing semi-trad Japanese framing. Project is 5 months but tbf this would be a decent timeline for a US project that encompasses framing, insulation, int & ext finishes. Seems to be a lot of overlapping modern materials with traditional techniques youtu.be/vRn8Ck2xiqo?...

Reading Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality, by Robin Bertram, who embedded herself in the Chicago Department of Buildings. Code development is sort of the “elite” stratum of this world, so it’s interesting for me to learn about.

WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

“Cuba looks like it is ready to fall.” After U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s leader, President Trump said that Cuba’s days were numbered and that his administration may turn its sights on the island nation next.

This Massachusetts law requiring sprinklers in short-term rentals that "are let to six or more persons" looks like a mess. How is it determined how many people a unit can accommodate? But also, it makes no sense – long-term residential occupancies are at way more fire risk than short-term

The unit on the bottom of the plan is a three-story maisonette where every floor is accessible by elevator. And not an excruciatingly slow LULA, but a proper commercial elevator that you can actually rely on with dignity.

On top of that the STM still goes with the now very outdated design of extra-wide lateral encased escalators rather than the more modern and thinner glass balaustrade used by the REM. Not only in this 1980s stations, but even in newer ones.

Many agencies have some "confort" guidelines requiring upward-only or both upward and downward escalators above a certain height difference. For example, Translink requires 2 escalators >6m, Metrolinx > 7.5 m (iirc).

The vertical circulation between the platforms and the mezzanine at REM's Édouard-Montpetit and at de Castelneau métro. Despite a higher height difference (10-11 m vs 7-ish), the REM has just an upward escalator (and a narrower one), resulting in an overall way smaller footprint.

NBS still exists today as NIST but the housing division and plumbing work has been severely impacted by austerity, which was taken to another level under this administration.

8 years before the Great Depression, the Department of Commerce created a building and housing division within the National Bureau of Standards to solve issues with high labor and material costs, obstructive building codes and zoning regulations. Affordability solutions are right there waiting.

@jessetayriver.bsky.social has been posting here way more over the past few days, give him a follow if you’re a freak like that

Also, people seldom click on the only recently booked tab.

Slightly more than 1% of Madrid’s dwelling units are listed as whole-unit rentals. If the city were letting supply keep pace with demand, that’s not even one single year of new production. Yet more of the housing shortage discourse is about Airbnb than low production.

Most cities dealt with fire risk centuries ago by banning wood construction, then slowly reintroducing it with mass timber. The US went a different direction – wood almost everywhere but sprinklers required in even small houses and grass and flowers banned within 5 ft. of bldgs in downtown San Diego

NEW: NYC Mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is set to name Dina Levy as NYC’s new housing commissioner Levy will lead the Dept of Housing Preservation & Development She has worked as a top official at the NYS housing agency, the NYAG’s office and the nonprofit UHAB gothamist.com/news/mamdani...

The wonderful @johnczulowskiburns.bsky.social has joined Bluesky! Do give him a follow. He's the architect who produced the digital models of our buildings for #FormFollowsFuel, which enabled us to calculate #embodiedenergy for each of them. Also the stunning cover image. @florianurban.bsky.social

Este no es el golpe de Estado que yo apoyaba.

“Weeks earlier, U.S. officials had already settled on an acceptable candidate…Delcy Rodríguez, who had impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry…intermediaries persuaded the admin that she would protect and champion future American energy investments…”

Fascinating 1. Admin may not have informed Congress but has been talking regime change w US oil industry 2. Oil at $60, US firms not excited about major capex to get VZ heavy sour crude 3. Sounds like WH wants to prod oil firms to make their vision happen, more than WH doing US oil's bidding

(Semafor) - The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night — but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops .. @semafor.com www.semafor.com/article/01/0...

So idk if you’ve been living under a rock, but the whole reason the post-pandy Venezuelan emigrant wave has destabilized politics from Chile to the US is that the people leaving (and now cheering Maduro’s demise alongside the rich people who fled years ago) are *not* the upper class

“Foot-long flames” – closer to birthday candles than to the “pyrotechnics” usually implicated in mass casualty club fires. There was a chain of failures obviously, but the narrow source of ignition failure was nowhere near as egregious as in other events. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/w...