The Berkeley Block
Recently, Berkeley has rediscovered an apartment building type that’s common in much of the world: the 8-story block on a small lot.
Birds eye, plan, and street view of a neighborhood with 8-story buildings on 50'x100' blocks. Much of downtown Berkeley and Southside will look like this when fully built out.
Most new mid-rise apartment buildings in the US are wide buildings that take up half a block or more. However, it’s hard to find sites that big in places like Berkeley that have remained built out. It’s possible to buy up adjacent property to get a larger site, however, this takes time and is expensive.
Instead, once zoning and building codes changed to allow larger buildings on single 50'x100' lot, developers started building single-lot midrise apartments. In Berkeley’s case, it was a combination of local rezoning such as the Southside rezoning, as well as state law such as AB2345 and AB1287 which increased the maximum affordable housing density bonus from allowing buildings that were 35% larger, to buildings that are 100% larger. The California building code was also updated to allow buildings built with a mix of wood and concrete to be up to 8 floors, up from previous limits of 5 or 6.
Here are a couple examples in Southside, near the UC Berkeley campus. While designed for students, the inside is divided into apartments with individual kitchens, rather than dormitory-style.
While currently rare in the United States, this is a type of apartment building that’s popular in much of the world, especially in middle income countries. Defining features include:
- Built on a single small lot, typically 50'x50' to 50'x80' . (50'x100' in California)
- Building itself is a simple box. While more of a cube shape in other parts of the world, in the US, lots are deeper and the building code requires two stairs, so California’s version is longer, with apartments in the middle that face the side yard.
- No front yard, small rear and side yards. In China, this type of building is called a 握手楼, or handshake building, since you can reach out the window and shake hands with your neighbor. However, unlike tenements in New York or European perimeter blocks, the sides of these buildings do not share a wall.
Right: Shenzhen, China. Photo by BISLTAIO Tosmacia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SZ_%E6%B7%B1%E5%9C%B3_Shenzhen_%E7%A6%8F%E7%94%B0_Futian_%E6%B2%99%E5%B0%BE%E6%9D%91_ShaWeiCun_%E5%9F%8E%E4%B8%AD%E6%9D%91_village_buildings_June_2024_R12S_01.jpg
For comparison, here is an example of perimeter blocks in Vienna.
The ground floor of these buildings have small storefronts that take up most of the ground floor. The entrance for residents is small, with just a door or gate on the street. This type of building works very well in pedestrianized areas with narrow streets.
The examples in Berkeley have the storefronts facing the main street. The sides of the building are fenced off yards split between neighboring buildings and often unused— perhaps a missed opportunity.
Typical sites for building this type of apartment are small commercial buildings, such as this one in Berkeley, where a 8-story building is currently proposed.
Since the buildings take up most of the lot, construction requires using some space on the street. The US version has up to 5 wood floors on top, with the rest concrete. 8 stories is common since taller buildings are classified as high rises in the US building code and require additional design features that add cost.
In most of the world, wood is not used for urban construction, and instead, this type of building has a reinforced concrete frame, with brick infill walls. In Egypt they are called red-brick buildings. https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/housing/housing-cairo-self-initiated-urbanism
Right: An apartment under construction in Howrah, India. The structural frame and floors are reinforced concrete, walls are brick. Photo by Biswarup Ganguly, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Low_Cost_Apartment_In_Making_02653.JPG
Elsewhere in the world, these workhorse buildings are the unsung heroes of urban housing, providing the bulk of homes in many places. Even in places like China, where prosperity and government planning preferences have moved on to skyscrapers, the basic 8-story block continues to be an important source of low cost housing, and now, instead of demolition, there have been experiments at renovating these buildings.
More on that at https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/the-end-of-an-era-two-decades-of-shenzhen-urban-villages/, https://www.hangjianet.com/topic/15135897414400000, https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/why-shenzhens-plan-transform-urban-villages-causing-distress
Double lots (100'x100'), especially on the corner, are a prime opportunity as they have twice the storefront, and more upstairs windows can face a street instead of a wall. These sites can be suitable for 10–20+ story high rise buildings, which take the same concept and stretch it taller.
As small-lot highrises make a return to the Bay Area, we’ve got plenty of examples from around the world to learn from… as well as some right across the Bay, where a few dozen were built in San Francisco’s fanciest neighborhoods, such as Pacific Heights, from the 1920s-1970s.
