[hibikir]

Large parts of the floor would be illegal to hand to anyone due to lack of natural light: They are only reasonable for offices because most of the floor doesn't have full walls, or said walls are transparent. They are also in locations where you might not want to live anyway, as there's minimal commercial support around the building for the services you would need if living in a weird, limited apartment.

It's a bit like how suburban commercial areas are now in trouble because there are fewer companies interested in the big box anchors, and without them many a strip mall stops making economic sense. But there at least the anchor is just a big empty box, not an 8 or 9 digit investment.

[general1465]

> Large parts of the floor would be illegal to hand to anyone due to lack of natural light:

This is weird regulation to me. Why it is not allowed for apartment, but it is OK for office? Both buildings are sheltering humans, just during different stage of being awake.

[TFNA]

Like the GP said: in offices the floor is often a big open space where light from windows can extend a long way. But once you start dividing up that big space into smaller residential units with walls, that light gets blocked.

[treis]

I don't think bedrooms really need windows and in some ways they're preferable with the light & noise reductions.

Even if that's solved the bigger problem is earthquake code. These older buildings aren't up to modern code and significant renovations would require structure changes.

[watwut]

Bedrooms are where people spend majority of their time when awake. It is where kids play, do homework, adults work from home, watch youtube, read internet.

Unless we are talking about super large appartment with tons of rooms, they need windows

[Arnt]

1000m² with one window wall: do you think that's an open-plan office or an apartment? And you can't really split it into ten, an apartment with e.g. 5m of windows and 20m depth doesn't work.

[Melatonic]

Seems like a creative opportunity. Each floor could be apartments on the outside with a shared workspace or coffee shop or gym in the middle. Or even do stuff like hydroponics.

[skybrian]

From a landlord’s point of view, efficiency is about how much rent you can get for it, either directly or by making nearby units more attractive. Hidden away on an upper floor doesn’t seem very attractive as a commercial space?

If they can’t rent the interior for much, that’s going to make replacing it with a new building look better because it’s more efficient.