Just listened to the Oct 7, 2019 episode of the Leading Voices podcast, where they interviewed Peter Linneman. It's a great little history of how he, through completely revamping Wharton's RE program (he called it "a disaster" multiple times), shaped institutional real estate everywhere.
The interview ends with two bits of advice from Linneman (52:52 timestamp):
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Read. Read. Read.
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"Look at property and ask 'why?' Why was that building built that way when it was built. Would you build that building that way today if you were starting from scratch."
He gives an example of housing that used to be built in the shape of a capital E (when viewed from above). At the time it was the best way for developers to provide adequate ventilation.
My question to the jungle:
Anyone have examples of a time they wondered why something was built the way it was, and the answer wasn't necessarily intuitive?
Podcast available here: https://leadingvoicespodcast.com/peter-linneman/
edit: cleaned up an awkward autocorrect
Why anyone in the 60's and 70's thought that it was a good long-term idea to build office buildings with 8' ceilings and minimal exterior glass is a mystery to me. I understand that was an effort to design a building that could be heated/cooled more efficiently, but it came entirely at the expense of the occupants' experience.
The movement in the 50's and 60's to tear down buildings in Downtown Atlanta (and I'm sure elsewhere), only to replace them with parking decks, is also maddening in retrospect. At the time, the vision of the future was every single working adult driving in from the suburbs in their own family station wagon.
All good points. Glass typically does come at a premium to hard wall materials like masonry, so installing smaller/fewer windows does reduce construction costs. Height restrictions may have also been a factor, and I suppose there may have also been marginal cost savings by reducing the materials needed to distribute mechanical services throughout the building on a $/SF basis. They would be incurring more costs though by needing additional restroom fixtures, additional electrical panels, etc. Essentially they're adding more square footage, but they face the law of diminishing returns as each square foot added becomes less and less valuable and reduces the value of every square foot previously built.
That being said, I'd argue that a developer is shooting themselves in the foot by cutting costs in that manner, particularly if they minimize the slab to slab distances. With exterior glass there's more of a trade-off. They're killing their rent upside and making an undesirable product, at least in today's market. It's somewhat more understandable with 60's and 70's era product, when things like natural light and open workspaces were not as sought-after.