Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge (2025) Challenge: Envision a way to boost housing, lower costs, & allow more light-filled, family-friendly units on small Denver lots Result: 230+ creative submissions from designers and architects around the world architecturecompetitions.com/pointaccessb...

Baltimore looks to be the next municipality to adopt single-stair reform after great advocacy work by @serviceurbanisme.bsky.social Interesting to see fire officials educating themselves on the topic and coming around to the changes after initial resistance www.baltimorebrew.com/2025/09/25/a...

it's absurd that a walkup single stair building for 96 residents (and no elevator) is legal - but a 4-5 story single stair (with protected stair, shorter travel distance from apt. to stair) serving half that is not.

Modular, mass timber, and single-stair This workforce housing project in Montana maxes out the current IBC code limitations on single housing with a 10,000 sf floor plate and 8-bed units that each feature shared living, kitchen, and laundry. www.idcubedmodular.com/blank

The Boston Globe Editorial Board is running a whole series on the state’s excessive building code regulation over the next three weeks – single-stair, Massachusetts’s unusually low high-rise definition, and the mess of different septic system rules www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/21/o...

St. Olavsvei Apartment Block (Norway) •Mass timber •5-stories •28 units •up to 7 units per floor •single-stair

In light of today’s news I’d like to remind you that this is a real newspaper clipping. History repeats itself when we don’t stop it.

Register to learn more about modular European construction with this live webinar featuring German architects at DETAIL Magazine's Modular Construction Congress. Presentation is in German with English subtitles. www.detail.de/de_en/modulb...

Why are single-stair buildings actually SAFER than two stair buildings in some circumstances? It seems counter intuitive… obviously, more redundancy is better, right?

Design study comparing single-stair vs multiple stair egress on a small 5,500 SF lot in Denver: (L) double-loaded corridor •71% efficiency •(4) units (R) single-stair •87% efficiency •(4) dual-aspect units

LA’s firefighter union has come out with a four-page letter opposing single-stair buildings. I’m going to respond to a few of the points within it. 🧵

Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge (2025) Challenge: Envision a way to boost housing, lower costs, & allow more light-filled, family-friendly units on small Denver lots Result: 230+ creative submissions from designers and architects around the world architecturecompetitions.com/pointaccessb...

Jensen Hughes won the NYS contract to conduct a single-exit study for the state code (the city already allows six stories and has a very different building code). The contract is in the amount of $331,000, and it has an end date of May 2027. wwe2.osc.state.ny.us/transparency...

Denver's KGA Studio published this great summary of the impact of Denver's upcoming single-stair building code change with an analysis of which of the city's zoning districts hold the most potential kgarch.com/single-stair...

Yes, regulatory hurdles (like the building code) make affordable housing harder and more expensive to build in North America than other parts of the world. internationalfireandsafetyjournal.com/fire-codes-m...

The next Democratic president should declare that the National Emergencies Act and Article II of the Constitution allow him to: •admit D.C. and Puerto Rico as states •abolish ICE •grant citizenship to any immigrant •disband the 5th Circuit •expand the Supreme Court Seriously: Why the hell not?

Few things throw multi-family architects into a tail-spin more than pointing out: US building code does not require elevators in multi-family housing.

One of the big selling points of model building codes is that they can lead to uniform rules across the country. But this doesn’t work when almost every state/locality wants to put their own spin on things. This was one cause leading to a preemptive federal building code for manufactured housing.

For nearly 20 years, many European cities have used the Leipzig Charter as a guide to tackle housing, climate, and equity challenges—turning big goals into local action. What if North American cities had a housing north star like the Leipzig Charter? ec.europa.eu/regional_pol...

want to know why point access blocks are the super fruit of urbanism the world over? they unlock so much f*cking housing. literally millions of units. in every state

City of Denver analysis reveals major potential for single-stair housing — identifying 39,000 parcels where single-stair apartments could be built. This includes hundreds of vacant lots across the city and lots where affordable housing incentives allow for the construction of taller housing.

Spending the morning at the City of Denver's first single stair "Focus Group" being led by members of the building department, city council, and fire department, who are all in attendance

Housing advocates, your input is needed! This project is currently illegal to build in Denver but that could change. Officials are considering changes to building code to allow taller single-stair buildings and soliciting public feedback. 👉 Take the survey here: us.openforms.com/Form/dfdefa7...

So many things to love about this compact, German hotel floor plan. Incredibly efficient floor plate w/ 4 units clusters around an open stair, a small elevator, views galore, balconies, and a corner window to boot.

Unfortunately, Unlocking Houses Choices is only focused on 2-9 unit projects that tweak the urban single-family house form. That approach is short-sighted and wouldn't allow for a high quality development like Atlanta's 10-unit Finley Street Cottages. www.cnu.org/what-we-do/b...

Denver's Planning and Development Department recently launched an Unlocking Housing Choices task force seeking to allow more missing middle housing forms through updates to Zoning and "other city rules and regulations." www.denvergov.org/Government/A...

if you're a politician interested in understanding why our multifamily housing in the US is so poor - and yet paradoxically so expensive... why we can't build family-friendly neighborhoods, why TOD is so autocentric - please reach out! one-pager on my book here: www.larchlab.com/wp-content/u...

BAKÚ Boutique Apartments (Buenos Aires) •5 stories •18 cross-ventilated units •30' wide lot •1 stair

seattle's approach to housing crisis is to substantially increase FAR without increasing height proportionally. the end result is buildings that offer a pretty low quality of life for both new and existing residents 110 homes on a sub-8000 sf lot. FAR ~6.0 for 8 stories courtyard is ~21.5' wide

Spread the word, vote for the single-stair panel at SXSW 2026!

This might be Denver's first single-stair project > 3 stories. A concept plan has been submitted in Globeville for a 5-story, 15 unit project in anticipation of the city adopting single stair code provisions later this year.

A new state has joined the single-stair club: New Hampshire now allows four stories of multifamily, four units per floor, with a single stair. And it’s the cleanest code section there is – same conditions as for three stories. www.centerforbuilding.org/trackers?tra...

Excited to see AIA East Tennessee hosting a single-stair design competition to highlight Tennessee's recently passed code changes. Registration is free and submissions are due August 29. www.aiaetn.org/housing-etn/

Denver plans to adopt single-stair code changes by year’s end and is seeking input via online survey & focus groups. Speak up to support broader housing options! Take the survey or register for the focus groups here - denvergov.org/Government/A...

interesting piece by @henrygrabar.bsky.social on the double duplex dorms being built all over LA to bypass multifamily housing regulations. these are effectively single stair buildings but with a far lower level of safety than multifamily single stair buildings have. slate.com/business/202...

"$70,000,000 is being spent to start (not finish) something we could have gotten for free, all because a small group misled enough voters about costs and outcomes to defeat 2O during an off-year primary election” 10/10 quote from @davidpnut.bsky.social denverite.com/2025/07/24/p...

This but with the quality of the built environment english.elpais.com/culture/2025...

The story of Vienna's new visionary district, Aspern Seestadt, through the eyes of it's designer and residents. Residents actively participated in planning their homes with a key goal: vibrant, connected neighborhoods. youtu.be/zUGdGRNIivI?...

Emergency Exit Plan - 24-story tall HoHo Wien, one of the world's tallest mass timber structures Interlocking stairs maintain a compact footprint

Nashville makes news for passing Smart Stair Building Code. 1 stair -> 6 stories, small footprint, no limit on construction type just like Seattle has allowed for decades www.wkrn.com/news/local-n...

Regulations for housing in the US are so bad that one design firm, Kronberg U+A, offers services to identify and address shortcomings of the building code to improve housing options www.kronbergua.com/zoning-policy

Ilana Glazer = stair pilled www.instagram.com/reel/DLpl7Nv...

Ilana Glazer gives a shoutout to the Center for Building in North America’s work on stairs and elevators in a video by NYC CM Chi Ossé x.com/OsseChi/stat...

Nashville passes single stair reform unanimously (Imagine a rollicking guitar accompaniment) nashville.legistar.com/LegislationD...

As the average household size shrunk since 1960, the median size of a new home in America doubled. We have to get back to building a variety of housing in all of our communities, providing starter homes and places for people to downsize into as life circumstances dictate.

Tashiro 71 (Nagoya, Japan) •small 3,600 sf lot •9,300 gross sf building area •10 stories •10 units •1 stair •71 windows

Colorado could allow vastly more affordable housing options yet chooses not to. coloradosun.com/2025/07/01/n...

I spent last week in Vienna's Aspern Seestadt eco-district that I had read about in @holz-bau.bsky.social's book Building For People Formerly an airfield (Flugfeld Aspern), the walkable district is one of Europe's largest urban development projects and shows pedestrian-centric living is possible

"The automobile city is the anti-city which annihilates the city wherever it collides with it." —Lewis Mumford

Save the Date - June 9th, Denver City Council will be discussing adoption of single-stair provisions at 1:30pm during a committee meeting. Watch live online on Denver's Channel 8 - www.denvergov.org/Government/A...