Around the world, the idea of turning offices underused in the wake of COVID's work-from-home phenomenon into housing is a hot topic. But experts say such projects are few and far between in Australia for a reason.
abc.net.au/news/empty-offices-housing-crisis-not-necessarily-a-perfect-solution/102388556As Australia grapples with a housing crisis and a pandemic-wrought workplace shift that's left office buildings in major cities underused, a seemingly simple solution has been floated: converting those offices into apartments.hot topic of discussion at a recent World Economic Forum meetingConverting offices into residential spaces is not a new idea, and it has been done before in Australia.
"It sounds great in theory, but once we get into practice there are some really big challenges we have to be aware of," he said.Natural light is harder to get right in apartments than in offices, experts say. Sydney has a handful of recent examples of successful office-to-residential conversions, such as the Greenland Centre on the corner of Bathurst and Pitt streets that houses close to 500 apartments.
BVN architecture's Phillip Rossington, who was one of two principals who led the project, said it helped that the existing building that formed the bottom-third of the new tower was not as deep as other office buildings."The existing steel structure had very long spans and it had two lift cores. We removed those two cores to put in a central lift core, which was more applicable to an apartment building.
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