Regional and Urban Design Committee

How "One Plus Five" Wood Buildings Shape American Cities

  • 1.  How "One Plus Five" Wood Buildings Shape American Cities

    Posted 03-27-2015 06:08 PM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Housing Knowledge Community and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
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    Nobody would for one minute mistake a car or an airplane from 1955 for one from today. Everything, from technology to style is just too different.
    By contrast, enter a new house or an apartment and clues that give away the newness are harder to find: They may be obvious in kitchen and bath, but even that is not certain, since fashionable retro stoves and claw-foot tubs could be deceiving even in those places where technology would be most likely. The new house would probably be more open and bigger, but from light switches to receptacles, from door hardware to double hung windows, things look essentially the same. On second glance, though, things in the new house feel flimsier, thinner and less substantial. Maybe there is a white plastic porch railing masquerading as solid wood or vinyl siding doing the same, maybe the doors are light, hollow and molded instead of being made from actual wood panels.  This general impression might deepen when one starts looking "under the hood": copper and cast iron pipes replaced by PVC, true dimension heavy wood joists and posts replaced by engineered trusses, strand board, and quick growth studs light as cigar boxes. Slate has yielded to asphalt shingles, wood floors have become laminate, and porcelain sinks replaced by cultured stone. Brick now comes as a thin cement imitation, cornices are made from Fypon, and flagstone water tables are only paper thin. 
    One could discuss all that in the context of cultural criticism and bemoan what did change ("nothing is like it used to be") or, alternatively, decry that not enough has changed ("the construction industry is stuck in the Middle Ages"). Both cases could be made with ease.  Change in the construction industry, indeed, seems to be glacial.  On the other hand, the critique of the loss of a more substantial architecture could be based on more than nostalgia. It could be based in resilience (withstanding forces of nature) or sustainability (flimsy construction and rapid decay as waste). 


    The Baltimore Jefferson Square project is a typical One-Plus-Five
    (photo: ArchPlan Inc.)

    The rather recent appearance of the "one-plus-five" formula has moved the debate from the suburbs to the city and from a discussion about components to one about whole buildings and even urban form. What is "one plus five"? It is the wood construction, "stick-built" urban mixed-use building, exactly five stories tall, erected on a concrete podium. The first level capped by the concrete deck is retail, parking, meeting rooms or amenities and the floors above it are apartments, condos, or dormitories erected under the 3A construction type classification of the building model code IBC. 
    The International Building Code (IBC) allows wood-frame construction for five stories and more by meeting Type III-A construction requirements. Another level above grade may be added if the building includes a concrete podium, per Section 509. This allows the wood structure to be considered as a separate and distinct building for the purpose of determining area limitations, continuity of firewalls, limitation of number of stories and type of construction.
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    Klaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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