A piece of the city · Design
The core goes in first and the plans fill in around it
Your floor plan was decided by the elevators.
You assume the plans of a building were designed one by one. The core is fixed first (lifts, stairs, shafts and the corridor), and every suite is the space left at the perimeter. That is why one line of units reaches two faces and another reaches one.
The core goes in first
Lifts, stairs, shafts and the corridor are a fixed block, and everything else is arranged around it.
The core has to be serviced, so it sits where the services arrive and where the structure can carry it. It has to be reachable, so a corridor connects it to the whole floor. Those two requirements are settled before a single suite is drawn.
What is left over is the perimeter, and the perimeter is the only part of a floor plate that has daylight and outside air. So the question of what a suite looks and feels like is really the question of which piece of the perimeter it was given.
What the perimeter decides
A suite that reaches two faces gets light at different times of day, and it can often ventilate straight through. A suite that reaches one face gets one orientation and the corridor on the other side of its door.
Neither is a defect, and the plans often look similar on paper. The difference is in the building's shape: a narrow plate and a wide plate produce completely different sets of units, and the same developer can build both a block apart.
The plan is not drawn suite by suite. It is drawn outward from the core.
The core on your own floor
You can find all of this standing in the corridor, and it explains three things people notice without being able to name: why their bedroom has no window on a second side, why the neighbouring plan is theirs mirrored, and why the units at the corner cost what they do.
What to read off your own floor
Walk the length of your corridor once, then look at your own plan.
- Stand in the corridor and find the core: where the lifts and the stairs are.
- Note how the corridor relates to it: a ring, a single run, or a T.
- Count the suites on your floor that reach two faces, and the ones that reach one.
- Then open your own plan and mark how much of your unit touches the perimeter and how much touches the corridor.
- Read the two together. The corners were allocated by the shape of the plate, not by taste.
The type changes what sits at the centre. In a condominium the core is a block of lifts and shafts and the plate wraps it. A semi-detached house has the same logic at a smaller scale: the stair sits against the party wall, and the rest of the floor is whatever is left at the two ends. A detached house has the stair and the plumbing stack as its core, with light available on all four sides, which is the real reason it can be so much more flexible. A converted loft has a core built for a factory, so the plans often run deep from a single wall of windows.
The type changes the size of the thing in the middle. It does not change the order it is drawn in.
Why we send this
Almost everyone believes they chose their unit on its view or its finish. What was actually available to choose from was decided by where the lifts went, and that was settled before the building had a name.
So we read the plan. One thing about how this city is actually laid out, in enough detail that you can check it yourself and get the same answer. No figures we cannot source, no forecasts, nothing that expires in a fortnight.
How you can benefit from this: reading a plan for what was decided before anyone chose a finish.
Kal Ayyoub · Realtor® · RARE Real Estate Brokerage · 416spaces.com
Not advice. Nothing here is architectural, engineering or planning advice, and nothing is a valuation. The diagram is schematic and describes no real floor plate. No figure in this piece is a price.