Reuse
Grand hotels converted to housing, offices, colleges, and mixed use — what the structure permits, what the ballroom floor refuses, and where reuse fails.
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5.01
What the Floor Plate Actually Allows
A hotel floor plate was optimised for a specific bay-and-corridor logic — this explainer maps which reuse programmes fit that geometry naturally and which fight it, using floor-plate dimensions common across the 1920s–1960s building stock.
3 min read
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5.02
The Ballroom That Would Not Subdivide
Long-span ballroom structures resist subdivision because their structural system was designed around the open span — this piece looks at several reuse projects where the ballroom defeated the programme, and asks whether the right answer is to stop trying.
3 min read
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5.03
Hotel to Housing: Where the Numbers Break
Converting a downtown hotel to residential use is frequently proposed and frequently stalled — this piece identifies the specific building-code and structural gaps that make it harder than it looks, without pretending the economics are simple.
2 min read
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5.04
Preservation and Reuse Are Not the Same Argument
An argument piece clarifying the distinction between historic preservation (keep it as-found) and adaptive reuse (keep it alive), using hotel buildings where these two positions have come into direct conflict over the lobby or ballroom.
2 min read
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5.05
The Atrium Conversion Always Costs More
Cutting an atrium into an existing hotel block during reuse is a recurring proposal that routinely blows the budget — a walk-through of why: the structural transfer required, the egress implications, and the HVAC load the void creates.
4 min read
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5.06
Three Reuse Failures Worth Studying
Three hotel reuse projects — not named to avoid factual invention — where the programme failed not from lack of money but from a misreading of what the building was structurally willing to become; each failure illuminates a different class of mistake.
7 min read