Wait, Are Windowless Bedrooms Going to Be a Thing?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams caught the ear of the real estate industry this week when he suggested that changing building codes could ease the city’s acute housing shortage. One pitch Adams madeat a WNYC Gothamist eventon Monday was reviving Single Resident Occupancy developments as “studio apartments with shared living and working spaces.” (Construction of new SRO buildings was banned back in 1955.) Another idea was lifting the requirement that spaces designated as bedrooms have windows. “You know, when you sleep it should be dark,” Adams told the audience at the Green Space.

On Twitter、新哟rk State Assembly member Emily Gallagher pointed out that the window requirement dates back to theTenement House Act of 1879. “It helps to prevent infectious diseases from spreading and helps lessen the impact of interior pollutants like stoves,” Gallagher, who represents Greenpoint and Williamsburg, posted after Adams’ remarks. “Wonder if those issues are relevant today!” she added.

Not everyone sees it the same way, though.Building code consultant Jimmy Gandhicountered that, thanks to current housing codes, new developments can’t include the kinds of shaftways and smaller interior courts that would allow for more windows. “NYC wants all buildings to be a box with windows on the street and windows on the rear yard,” Gandhitweeted. “Which means the middle of the building ends up airless.”

Though not in place nationwide, laws regarding bedroom windows have been required in many states since the late-19th and early-20th centuries, when fire safety and adequate ventilation became important considerations. Since the beginning, though, developers have figured out ways to skirt those regulations: In my apartment in Tulsa, for example, the wall dividing my windowless bedroom from the kitchen stops about five inches from the ceiling. Technically, that gives me access to the living room window.

“I do think many people in our culture have a strong and deep-seated desire for windows in their apartments,” historian Daniel Jütte, author of the upcoming book透明度:材料的历史一个主意,told金博宝188app网址. But, Jütte adds, it’s important to consider what we expect our windows to do for us: “Whether [it’s] a detached view through a glass plate that protects us from the outside or [it’s] ways in which windows actually allow us to interact with the urban environment,” he explains. The latter requires a degree of open-ability even some curtain-walled condos don’t offer, Jütte adds. Proponents ofaltering New York’s Multiple Dwelling Lawto remove the window provision say its outdated. “You can make a perfectly livable space today with conditioned air and transoms,” Jordan Barowitz, a onetime city housing official and former spokesperson for the Durst Organization,told Gothamist.

Part of the drive for windowless bedrooms is the conversion of office buildings, which weren’t designed with residential requirements in mind. As remote work has reduced the demand for commercial properties, flipping them into apartments is an increasingly popular strategy. In the two-year span from 2020 to 2021, the total number of office conversions in the US hit 11,090, accordingto a study by Rentcafe, a record high and the peak of an upward trend that started more than a decade ago.

Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, which don’t have bedroom window mandates, are leading the pack. The two cities each converted more than 1,500 office buildings into residential properties between 2020 and 2021, compared to just 614 in New York. And, as developer Bobby Fijan pointed out, Philadelphia and DC have less stock and lower rents than the Big Apple but equivalent construction costs. Windowless bedrooms “are a critical part of most conversions to housing,” Fijantweeted, along with blueprints from projects that include them. Opponents, meanwhile, point toextensive researchlinking exposure to natural light to improved productivity, sleep, and mood.

There are also intangible benefits to being able to look out into the world from our most intimate sanctuaries.McMansion Hellblogger Kate Wagner slammed what she called the commodification of sunlight as an amenity. “Speaking personally, I do not want to live in a world where I know my neighbors don’t have access to the sun, the coming and going of the day,” Wagner noted inThe Nationthis week, calling it “one of the only free, universal blessings bestowed upon earth.”

University housing has been a major catalyst for the windowless bedroom phenomenon.Munger Hall, a titanic dormitory planned for UC Santa Barbara, made national headlines when its blueprint was unveiled in 2021. Nicknamed Dormzilla, the 11-story warehouse-like structure was designed by Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Charlie Munger to accommodate 4,500 students. The catch: 94% of them would have to live without real windows. Instead, they’d have “virtual windows” that,according to a statement, “substantially reflect the lighting levels and color temperature of natural daylight.” Following media scrutiny and campus protests, the design for Munger Hallhas been overhauled.

Juan Miró, chair of the school of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, has decried windowless dorm roomson his own campus, where, he reported, some student apartments lack any natural light in 44% of their bedrooms. Miró has called for a federal ban on windowless bedrooms. “Unless windows are required by law in all bedrooms for their inherent health benefits—natural light, ventilation and visual connection with the outside—there will always be those who will try to justify windowless bedrooms,” he wrote inArchDaily. “We cannot let that happen.”