Interview transcript (edited for brevity and clarity):
RVLTR (00:01:34):
So today we're gonna talk about single-stair buildings and why they might provide solutions to the housing crisis before we do. So can you tell us who you are and what you do in your own words, in three sentences or less?
Conrad Speckert (00:01:48):
Sure. I've recently graduated from architecture school. I did my undergrad in Ontario at Waterloo and my Master's at McGill. And what I've become really interested in is the issue of housing, especially around the missing middle and just how this can really deal with questions of affordability. And yeah, currently I spend my days working on the [building] code change, which is kind of a continuation of what I've done as my thesis project,which is all about single-stair buildings in Canada.
RVLTR (00:02:20):
Okay. So before we jump into the single staircase buildings can you tell us a little bit more about that effort or project you're working on for the code change? Have you been mandated by someone or is it something you were doing independently? How is that working for you?
Conrad Speckert (00:02:36):
I wish someone had told me to do this, it basically began as a thesis project, four months of research where I started to look at what other jurisdictions allow the types of multi-unit buildings that are possible. And that work was really well received and given the recent kind of pressure and timing around issues of housing affordability, I've been really encouraged by other architects and then got some funding through federal grants to actually develop this into a code change, for the national building code.
RVLTR (00:03:21):
So you're working on the changes and you are going to submit them to the regulatory authority at some point in the hopes that they'll change the code based on your recommendations?
Conrad Speckert (00:03:32):
Yes.
RVLTR (00:03:33):
That's amazing. Let's talk about single staircase buildings and what they are exactly.
Conrad Speckert (00:03:41):
So single staircase buildings, which you'll hear some people refer to as point access blocks, is a building that has one exit stair. For instance, in North America, mostly for apartment buildings, we have a door with two exit stairs at either end. But there's way more flexibility in the types of floor plans you can design and the way you can lay out units when you can have one central exit stair it gets you much more livable spaces, more natural daylight and better passive ventilation. And it's really the dominant housing type in urban environments around the world, except in North America where we do double loaded corridors, which are pretty much the same layout as a hotel. So your apartment is a shoebox and my favourite term I've heard someone use for it is that they are "safety deposit boxes in sky".
RVLTR (00:04:52):
Yeah. There's a lot of truth to that. So is there a particular reason why we don't have them in North America?
Conrad Speckert (00:04:59):
Our building code does not permit it. In Canada, you're not allowed to build above two stories with a single stair. And there's only one exception to that, which is townhouses, for which you can go to three stories with the stairs just within that unit. In the US, you can go to four stories, although every city actually has its own kind of variation on that. And when you start to look at building codes in the States, it's crazy how every single city is slightly unique in its own way.
RVLTR (00:05:36):
So in the course of your research, have you found out what was the rationale for two stairs in North America? Is there a particular reason?
Conrad Speckert (00:05:46):
I'll give you two versions of an answer to that. The Canadian building code was first published in 1941, and Canada has a history of building in wood frame construction, which is combustible construction. And so one really good argument for why the rules are the way they are. Is that in return for combustible construction, we have really stringent exiting requirements. To be honest, that made a lot of sense in 1941 when the code was first published, but today with modern firefighting practices, a really good understanding of people's behaviour in fire, with modern fire alarm systems, with a whole bunch of other things that we put into our codes and just a totally different way of building buildings it really doesn't reflect that condition. So I'd say it's the history of building in wood. And then the other one is that in Canada, there isn't really a history of dense, walkable urbanism, which is the way cities have been built in Asia and Europe for a long time. So that never meant that there was any kind of pressure to optimize the codes for mid-rise apartment buildings. That's why in Canada, there's "part nine", which makes it really easy and, and affordable to build low rise buildings below three stories and 600 square meters. And then as soon as you exceed that, you jump into a whole new basket of rules, which means that a developer will very rarely be able to pencil out a project that's four or five stories and it just adds pressure to go really high. So I'd say those are two answers to it. And maybe one thing just to add to it to compare is that in talking to a code expert a really good description I got is that basically the older the building code is the longer that document is. The code in Canada is over 2000 pages long, whereas in a country like Switzerland, for instance, it's only about 600. A lot of countries after WWII just started over with a new code, but in North America, our code is based off of codes from individual cities. So Chicago, New York and Boston. That basically means that there's a lot of stuff that's in the code Canada today, that's based off of risk assumptions from over a hundred years ago.
RVLTR (00:08:34):
What you said about the double stair requirement, making it more difficult for developers to build denser or to make their proforma work really, it sounds to me like there's an analogy to the now removed parking requirements that made developments much more challenging because you had to dig two or three stories to build a parking lot. Whereas nowadays there's maximum parking requirements that either allow you to not have any parking if you do, to keep it to a bare minimum. So do you think if that rule was removed or amended, it would have a similar impact on the ability of developers to make their proformas work?
Conrad Speckert (00:09:20):
Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned the parking thing because when I first started looking into this, the first initial literature review Eb Zeidler, who is a really renowned architect in Toronto, was in an interview in the Toronto Star way back in 2004 where they were asking him about the new kind of midrise planning guidelines and what that would mean for the city of Toronto along avenues. He brought up specific points. He spent the whole interview talking about the issue of the two means of egress and the parking requirements. And so what's really exciting is that the city has removed and changed those parking requirements, which suggest, you know, in part, if you follow Zeidler's logic, the stairs are that other big hurdle. Now without a doubt, zoning regulations, questions of how projects are financed there are huge other implications out there. And a lot of that has to do with politics and complex regulations, but as a specific building code issue, within the realm of architects and engineers and planning departments the issue of the single stair is huge.
RVLTR (00:10:44):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So to go back to the idea of the code dating back to 1941, being probably on the older side of building codes worldwide and it being based on the fact that a lot of buildings were wood frame buildings at the time, it doesn't seem to me that there's a lot of mid-rise apartment buildings that are built out of wood. Generally it would be either concrete or nowadays maybe mass timber or combination of steel and concrete, or maybe a concrete superstructure with partitions. So it doesn't seem like there's any reason anymore to justify that because as you and I both know apartment buildings in Europe are generally concrete either precast or cast in place. And they all have a single-stair exit. Would that be any different in Canada if we had more of those kinds of mid-rise buildings, like say six to 12 stories?
Conrad Speckert (00:11:53):
It's really a question of combustible and non combustible construction. I can point you to dozens of projects, which are wood frame, mass timber, what we define as combustible construction that are single-stair in Europe. So it's not to say that the single stair is related to non-combustible construction in any of those codes, but maybe the best way to describe this is that there's an essay which someone from the Canadian code development wrote in the 1980s which was basically called "the issue of combustible". And what it was talking about is that for the longest time, we always define wood as combustible and concrete or steel is non combustible, but the modern code is actually set up that it really, that's really not the discussion at hand in that performatively, It's about time, it's about the fire rating of your assembly. You can build a wood frame building with a two-hour fire rating, the same way as concrete. We really have to untangle this idea of a building being either non-combustible or combustible because that has also a huge impact on the embodied carbon of how you build as well. What's really exciting about everything that's happening with mass timber is that you can build out of wood just as safe. This was the huge push that happened in 2015 and in the IBC and in the US in 2018 is that you can build out of wood to be just as safe as out of concrete. So that material question has really been debunked in the past few years especially through the work of the Canadian wood council.
RVLTR (00:13:51):
I remember in my student days back in France at the time mass timber wasn't all the rage, but it had already kind of started taking hold in Germany and Switzerland and the architecturally progressive countries. I was stunned to learn at the time that from an engineering perspective, a mass timber member would withstand fire for a long time because that outer layer burns and then it protects the inside of the structure. So as long as you oversize your members, your structure should stand up for quite some time. It seems that in the public psyche, and even with architects, they say: "oh, wood is combustible and concrete isn't" and I think you make a very good point. It's maybe time to jettison that outdated mode of thinking and really start thinking in terms of what makes sense from a safety perspective.
Conrad Speckert (00:14:51):
I'll just add to that. I was at a passive house conference a few months ago, and there was a prefabricated straw bale manufacturer from Eastern Europe who was giving a presentation. And it boggles my mind, but they actually produce straw bales, that just seems to me like the most combustible thing in the world, but they have created a straw bale panel that has a fire rating of either 90 minutes or two hours. Incredible.
RVLTR (00:15:23):
I'm supposing it has non combustible finishes on the outside. Is that what it is?
Conrad Speckert (00:15:29):
Yeah, I really should have paid closer attention to really know exactly what it is that they've done, but the stringent fire testing that these new materials have to go through to be able to conform to the codes. They met the requirements and the guy actually showed a video: it's got a wood frame and then the installation of the straw bale is basically infill. And in the final testing video, the wood of the frame burned first and burned far more vigorously than the straw bale in between.
RVLTR (00:16:05):
That's interesting
Conrad Speckert (00:16:07):
It turns the logic on its head.
RVLTR (00:16:08):
It goes to show that and that's more of a general comment about technology - that you can't really predict what new technologies will allow you to do even in the near future. That's why maybe it's time to revise the building code or even scrap it and start from scratch, as you said, I don't know if that's a good idea.
Conrad Speckert (00:16:31):
I won't say that or I'll get shot when I submit my building code change.
RVLTR (00:16:36):
You didn't, but I did, so you're safe.
Conrad Speckert (00:16:40):
One thing I can add to that is that the big issue with new materials and new practices, the combined crises right now of housing and climate, there are solutions out there that can really address both these issues that we see happening in other jurisdictions. And what's frustrating is that the code in Canada explicitly says that you can do alternative solutions. So when you go for a building permit, if you think you can exceed the life safety of what's considered acceptable in the code, you consider that alternative solution.
RVLTR (00:17:21):
But then you have to fund your own testing, right?
Conrad Speckert (00:17:23):
Have to fund your own testing. Exactly. There's no mechanism to do that upfront and collaboratively. You can't do it until you get a building permit. And by the time you're at the building permit, all decisions have been made essentially. And so it's an incredibly risky thing, but it does happen for lots of stuff. The double stair requirement has been in the code since the beginning. The mantra "you must have two means of egress" is something that is drilled into the brains of architecture students from first year. So you're going up against a Goliath of assumptions when you try to come up with an alternative solution for that, which is why - quite reasonably - no one does it.
RVLTR (00:18:10):
And to be fair, I think the housing crisis, although I hate this term crisis, because it's overused. I'm sure the building code change could have a serious impact on making it easier. But I personally, and this is a whole other topic for another podcast, but I personally think it's a zoning issue and the politicians' lack of balls to be direct, to change the code, to allow more midrises as of right. The building code would help if you didn't have a second stair requirement, but there's also an entire 60 or 70% of the city of Toronto, where you can only build single-family houses as of right. This is insane. This is madness. And I've talked about this many times on this podcast with Chris Spoke...
Conrad Speckert (00:19:02):
Are you counting how many times someone says yellow belt on your podcast?
RVLTR (00:19:06):
If I had to drink every time, I'd be drunk. (laughs)
Conrad Speckert (00:19:14):
If anybody thinks that I'm coming in here proclaiming that a single stair is a silver bullet, no, it's not a silver bullet. The issue of zoning, the issue of acceptable levels of profit in a proforma and the degree of capitalism that we insist on, there are bigger issues at stake here. But what's interesting about the single stair is that we don't need to hold an election to deal with the single stair. We don't need to go door to door and knock on everybody's house or deal with the NIMBYs. That shows up to a council meeting. Single stair is within the control and subject matter of professionals in this industry. So we should be able to have a really adult conversation about it.
RVLTR (00:20:04):
Probably no one cares like outside of the profession anyways. So if that requirement were removed, people wouldn't even give a thought to it.
Conrad Speckert (00:20:13):
I've been accused by some people of trying to kill people.
RVLTR (00:20:18):
That's always gonna happen, I'm afraid. So let's talk a little bit about your research and what motivated you to do your thesis on the subject in the first place, how did that come about?
Conrad Speckert (00:20:33):
I grew up in Europe. I grew up in a single stair building. It was three stories and five apartments. When I started architecture school in Canada, we had a housing project and multi-unit we did, I think, three stories and the professors made it very explicit: you need to have two means of egress. And at the time I didn't realize the significance of that statement. But then after architecture school, I was working in Toronto doing a lot of mid-rise, 6 to 10 storey housing.I completely understand why it is that way, but everything was a double-loaded corridor, 22 to 25 meters deep floor plates. So each unit is like a shoebox and really repetitive. And you'd get these long corridors because the code lets you do a corridor, basically up to 45 meters I think, which are just dead spaces. If you Google - it's a kinda cute name - "breaking up with the double-loaded corridor", it's this wonderful package that basically just compares what circulation could be and makes everybody envious of what that code change could create. So there's that kind of frustration working in Toronto and at the same time, you'd see precedents of housing going up in other places. I worked in Berlin where everything was single-stair. I lived in a single-stair. All my friends lived in single-stair buildings. When I was working in Japan the actual architectural office was a four story brand new building, single-stair. That was actually commercial use. So when I started my thesis and pondered: "Hey, what am I gonna do this on?" I started to just look at: "Has anybody ever really gone into this conversation in North America" and with the exception of the Zeidler article from 2004 the OAA, the Ontario association of architects published a report in 2019 - and I think you've had some of the people that worked on that on here before - and on one of the slides as part of their package recommendations, they mentioned a change to the Ontario building code to allow for single-stair buildings. I got goosebumps at that moment because it was in black and white, I'm not insane. It is a good idea, and I just decided to make this work for the next little while and then increasingly as I got into it it started with an essay that I wrote then that started turned into a grant to do a bit more research on it, then turned into a CMHC-funded "big project". And it just keeps growing.
RVLTR (00:23:38):
I think that's probably the best way to enter the profession is to develop something that makes you an expert and then people seek you out. So I think it's great that you did that and it's great that you continue beyond school and I think gives you a huge leg up professionally, now you're probably gonna start being seen - if you're not already - as the code reform expert in the country or hopefully that's what happens to you, leading to a great career. So let's talk a little bit about other places and, and I know we've touched on that here and there through other questions, but what do other building codes in other countries allow that are not allowed in Canada that would make a big difference?
Conrad Speckert (00:24:24):
That's probably my favorite question because once you start to look at what's possible in other countries and read some of these building codes you realize just how profoundly different things are. So in Germany and Switzerland, you can go up to 60 meters. That's about 20 storeys you with the single-stair and the requirements around sprinkler and pressurization and corridor separation - the life safety measures - change once you exceed 20 to 22 meters. In Japan, which again is a place with really significant earthquake risk, the rules are five stories. In China, you can go 80 meters. In Australia and New Zealand, which have a similar cultural context and background as Canada, it's 25 meters. And there's some beautiful examples of that there
RVLTR (00:25:25):
I've always been amazed with Australia's architectural quality. For such a small country in such a remote part of the world. I think they have, per capita, probably some of the best contemporary architecture almost anywhere, maybe except for Germany, Switzerland, and Spain or something, so it's no surprise that they're a bit more progressive too.
Conrad Speckert (00:25:50):
I'm curious, have you ever wondered why that is? Because I actually don't don't have a good answer. Because it seems to me that Australia and Canada competitive advantage-wise are similar Commonwealth countries.
RVLTR (00:26:04):
I don't know. I've asked many people, I've asked Australian architects. Nobody has a definite answer. Some people have elements of an answer, but it's hard to tell, I don't know if it's in the culture or if their building codes allow them to do things you can't do elsewhere. I'm not familiar enough with that, but I've been to Australia once for a couple of weeks. And just about anywhere I went, the creativity and the quality of architecture was outstanding. It's just mind blowing. I don't know if anyone has a good answer, but maybe it's cultural and because they're a bit weird sometimes. Maybe they just kind of carry that.
Conrad Speckert (00:26:55):
Canadians are not weird sometimes?
RVLTR (00:26:57):
They are, but not in a creative, funny way. What I'm saying may make no sense at all, but Australians are playful, you know, when you hang out with a group of Australians, they're gonna banter, they're gonna give you shit for having a silly name or wearing a funny shirt or not drinking as many beers as they do or whatever it is. And I think that translates into their design culture. They're just more playful, I guess, is the closest term I could use. Canadians can be weird from a European perspective and I am Canadian now, so I'm trying to be careful about what I say, but it's in a more conservative fashion. Socially speaking, Canadians are more conservative. They don't like to rock the boat. They don't like to stand out. So I think that's, to me, that's the chief distinction between Canadian and Australian cultures.
Conrad Speckert (00:27:56):
In a sense, our building code is a perfect reflection of our culture.
RVLTR (00:28:01):
Probably
Conrad Speckert (00:28:04):
Add to that a few more notes maybe. I'm in Quebec right now. So I better mention France. France is 50 meters. But if anyone listening to this is really curious, you can go to the website www.secondegress.Ca, And there's a whole list of countries and the maximum height you can build with one stair. Again, just to point out, Canada is at the bottom of that list. Maybe one other thing is the UK. The UK is at the top of that list and the UK actually has no limit on the maximum building height you can build. And there's been a few interesting articles recently because of the Grenfell disaster. Post-Grenfell there have been some building applications for buildings that are almost 50% taller than Grenfell with a single stair, and the code in the UK says: "This is fine". Part of the way that has come about is because in the UK, there's a "stay in place" firefighting strategy, which means that you stay in your unit, even once the fire alarm's gone off, until the fire department explicitly orders you to evacuate. And so for context, in the Grenfell tower disaster, a 24-storey tower, which caught fire in 2017, where the insulation wasn't up to code and was actually combustible on the facade. A lot of people died. But in that case, the fire alarm was going for more than 80 minutes, more than an hour before the building evacuation. And certainly, you know, the reason why that stay in place was there is because it's a single-stair building. There's the risk that you overwhelm that stair, nevermind the fact that firefighters are going up and people are going down if only have one. But Granfell was a 24-storey tower. I'm talking about this here, we're talking about mid rise buildings, five, six stories. There's a whole bunch more complexity into it as well. I just bring up Grenfell because the immediate gut reaction that I received from people who don't like this idea of single stair is to raise the example of the Grrenfell tower. But there is so much more complexity to that conversation than just the fact that it was a single stair building.
RVLTR (00:30:34):
The common fallacy, that logical fallacy that people make in any area of expertise, not just architecture where they'll pick one horrible, horrible incident as a justification for a rule that doesn't necessarily make sense. But if you think there's probably millions, or if not millions, maybe hundreds of thousands of towers like that across the world that didn't burn down. So for one of those that horribly burnt down, how many are still standing up and perfectly safe is really what you need to look at.
Conrad Speckert (00:31:08):
Yeah. I mean, Grenfell violated the code. The insulation they used on it was not code compliant and in a bunch of other ways, Grenfell could never repeat itself here because of the way that we have a whole bunch of rules in our building code that apply to buildings above 18 meters in Heights. In Canada, there's a really good package of rules that comes with high rise buildings. After Grenfell, authorities in Canada went: "Oh, could this happen here?" And they reviewed the codes and in Canada they are nothing like the code in the UK in terms of tall building requirements. There's a whole bunch of other safety measures in it beyond the issue of two stairs.
RVLTR (00:32:07):
It's a code compliance issue. It's not an egress issue basically. You should almost not be allowed to use that example, because it has it's almost entirely irrelevant
Conrad Speckert (00:32:24):
But it will come up. I know when this code change goes in people will raise hell and point at Grenfell. And precisely this conversation has to happen over and over again.
RVLTR (00:32:35):
That's why you have to be prepared. Logic doesn't always solve the issue because logic doesn't convince people necessarily, but I think you gotta stick to the evidence of the safety of those stairs by and large. Otherwise you can find a horrible example of anything just about anywhere in the world. So those 1-time instances should never be used as justification for not even considering a change in code.
Conrad Speckert (00:33:12):
Well I'm not gonna get into the whole conversation of post-truth and post-fact world because that's beyond my scope, but a U of T professor was describing this issue of "wicked problems" and in doing so had mentioned the debate around street widening or traffic calming where planners will say, you know, this saves lives because it slows traffic, which makes the streets safer. But often a fire department will come back and say: "No this doesn't save lives because it slows our response time to an emergency." And so you get two competing risk assumptions based on empirical knowledge. It's a really frustrating predicament because someone will say: "Okay, we need to create the study and hire a consultant to settle this debate." But how do you settle that debate when both sides have a competing value system?
RVLTR (00:34:18):
Well, there's an easy answer to that: buy smaller fire trucks like they do in Europe. Because it's true. There's probably issues with the fire departments not being able to fit those ginormous trucks through smaller streets, but that's a design problem. It's not a safety issue. You either design those streets to somehow still be able to accommodate those, or you just start buying smaller trucks for those instances where you can't fit the big ones. I don't think that's strictly a safety issue. It's a logistical problem that certainly has a solution. And as a society, you know, you were talking about post-truth and not wanting to get into debate, but I think we have to get into that debate because without necessarily being controversial, but we live in a world where information is biased and it always was biased to an extent, but the problem is that with contemporary media, they have access to analytical tools that they never had before. And what that means is that for anyone who puts out, say, the news, they can analyze the effect of any headline over thousands of viewers with a level of granularity that they never had access to before. What that means is that you can literally figure out which headlines will get the most clicks. And so, because we're wired - evolutionarily speaking - to respond to "drama" and unusual news, the media are producing news that directly taps into our subconscious or unconscious desire to respond to things that are unusual. Whereas, you know, a moderately written news headline will not attract anyone's attention because it doesn't stand out. And so to go back to the idea of post-truth and wicked problems we have to become attuned to the fact that the media is biased. Media are biased more than ever before, because they have access to that analytical data that enables them to produce content that people want to click on at a subconscious level. And we're not equipped to fight with that because we don't have time to spend any amount of time looking at a headline and thinking: "Is that trying to manipulate me?" We don't because people have lives to live. There's an asymmetry of power in some sense where we're bombarded with grandiose bombastic dramatic headlines that make everything sound like it's way worse than it is. So I'm not sure how that ties into what you were saying, but, you know, when you're trying to convince people that your code change could be good for the country and the cities as a whole and solve a whole bunch of problems in the process you have to be equipped to debunk those specious arguments that people are gonna make and say: "Oh, you're just trying to create a whole bunch of Grenfell towers." It's like: "No, and this is what the data tells me. What you're saying is false. And I can prove it."
Conrad Speckert (00:38:09):
That requires the opposing party to be willing to come to the table and have an adult discussion.
RVLTR (00:38:17):
That is true. That is entirely true. I just read a book that addresses all of that. It's called "Loserthink". I strongly advise you and anyone who listens to this to read it, because it's gonna equip you with some tools, persuasion-based tools to decide when it's time to walk away from an unproductive conversation or how in subtle and non-confrontational ways, you can try to convince people that your idea, maybe not as dumb as it seems because it's important, right? You have a great idea. You're doing great work and I think anyone who does anything similar to what you do and it's true for what I do professionally as well, we have to be equipped to be able to convince people that all new ideas are not necessarily bad. And you know, there's precedents out there that we can study. These could be the benefits we gain from changing this or that because you're gonna do it one step at a time. You're not gonna convince everyone that you are correct, but one domino knocks down another one and before, you know, you have enough support to support your idea and you change. Anyway, that's a bit of a digression.
Conrad Speckert (00:39:39):
It's fine. Since this work has started, I found myself reinstalling Twitter. It's very involuntary and reluctant. But partly because Mike Ellison who's an architect in Seattle and a really strong advocate for the single stairs. He's always on Twitter. He's the guy that posted about straw bales just earlier. And I find myself actually surprised by how intelligent Twitter can be. Perhaps it's an echo chamber because I just follow a bunch of other architects. I might speculate and I'm sure my professors at McGill will resent me for saying this, but I learned more on Twitter scrolling during my 30 minute metro ride every morning than I did in a three hour lecture at university. So we might be in a post-truth, post-fact era, but Twitter's been good to me.
RVLTR (00:40:43):
I haven't been on Twitter in a few years. I deleted my account, but I think there's kind of two Twitters. There's the cesspool of trolls Twitter that you really don't wanna engage with because it's just a bunch of angry people either actively trolling, so they don't even mean what they say, but they just wanna get a rise out of you or they're just plain dumb, and they don't really think for themselves and just repeat what they heard elsewhere as if it were truth. And there is a civilized Twitter, I think on very specific topics like maybe you're doing, where you'll have intelligent conversations with people who know what they're talking about and you can learn a lot from it. So I'm not a big fan of social media, but I think using the right way can be a very effective tool where you just have to know how and when to do it. We're not in a post fact world because there's a simple reason for that: architecture is still very much a real life-based discipline where building buildings with materials and if they're not built properly, they're gonna fall down and kill people.
Conrad Speckert (00:41:54):
If you didn't have to apply the building code, you might be in a post-fact world, but obviously we do and hence, we apply in a rational, reasonable way.
RVLTR (00:42:06):
The idea that facts don't matter and laws of science be damned, some people may think that way and I think it's a tiny minority anyway. But the reality is that those people will get hurt in the real world, whether it's literally or figuratively because you cannot - as long as we live in physical bodies made of matter - you can't escape the laws of physics - intellectually you can live in the fantasy you decide to live in, but at some point you have to engage with the real world and that's where the rubber meets the road, in my opinion. So you just mentioned this guy in Seattle and one of my questions was what's really special about Seattle?
Conrad Speckert (00:42:55):
Well, Seattle's a really cool city. It rains a lot, but it's a cool place, but that's not what's exciting. Seattle is the only jurisdiction in North America that lets you build to six stories with a single stair. They call it the Seattle special. They added specific requirements to the Seattle building code way back in 1977 to let you do these point access blocks. What's really exciting too, of course, is that when you look at those dependencies of why the code is the way it is in Canada, well Seattle has a history of wood construction and has a history of suburban sprawl. So culturally and contextually Seattle, it's right on the border with BC, it's a really good reference and precedent for the kinds of code changes we're talking about because, I can talk about codes in Asia and in Europe all day long, but that might just go over someone's head or seem unhelpful when you're talking in a north American context.
RVLTR (00:44:07):
Yes, Seattle Is close to home, right?
Conrad Speckert (00:44:09):
Seattle's close to home. Exactly. And they've had it for over 40 years and there's some beautiful examples of these single stair projects being built. Probably my favorite one is the Capitol hill urban co-housing. I got in touch with the architect that designed this. It's co-housing so they designed it, they live in it, their office is on the ground floor. It's just a dreamy story. When I talked to them, one of the questions was: "Did you look at the code alternative? - If you had to put two stairs or how in your massing options - How did you guys go through this?" They wanted to do it as co-housing, which meant that they found a bunch of other families with limited capital. So in a way it was really about affordability as well. And the single-stair design that ended up getting built has nine units, but they were looking at what would be required if they had to put two stairs and they were only able to actually fit six units. So you lose three units in that scenario.
RVLTR (00:45:14):
Yeah. It's 50% that's crazy.
Conrad Speckert (00:45:16):
That's huge, right? What that does to your costs, your construction costs and your proforma. These are his words: "We no longer would have been able to house the people we wanted to house in this project and probably needed to look for a higher income group of people." And then also if you look at this project, it's just beautiful the way the circulation works. There's this wonderful axonometric drawing that just shows how everything comes together and it's really aspirational. For someone living in Vancouver, this must be so frustrating to know that just across the border, you can do it. But in Vancouver one cannot.
RVLTR (00:46:03):
I'm looking at the website of the architect, it's pretty cool. It's interesting that Seattle has allowed that. You said it introduced that rule in the seventies?
Conrad Speckert (00:46:16):
I spoke with some people from Seattle's building code department and they added the rule in 1977 because at the time they were similar in the way that planning was laid out in Canadian cities. Suburban, single family, lots are being developed closer into the city. You have these small lots. And so really tight floor plans, really tight ability to fit something into it. And I guess in the 1970s they've realized, and they started having conversations with the fire department about: "Can we create a regulatory condition in which a single stair is allowed?" And what came out of that is a bunch of really good rational rules to say, okay, in the current code, the life safety says, you need two stairs. How can we write a code that lets you have one stair? But is arguably as, or safer than what's currently allowed. And so what they added was they said: "Okay, these buildings need to be sprinklered. The stair needs to be pressurized and pressurization is all about blowing air into the stair to positively pressurize it to keep smoke out." For that scale of building with two stairs it's not a requirement. They increased the fire ratings and the biggest thing is they set a maximum limit. And this is really similar to a lot of European jurisdictions. You cannot have more than four apartments on each floor, which is also in terms of livability, quite nice. Because then it's a bit more intimate. Your units are all on corners.It has a whole bunch of other implications for the kind of scale and maybe less anonymous kind of culture in that kind of building.
RVLTR (00:48:17):
That makes a lot of sense. So has there been any studies of the impact of that rule in Seattle since it was implemented?
Conrad Speckert (00:48:26):
None that I've come across.
RVLTR (00:48:32):
Because what would be interesting is to see and pre- and post-rule Seattle and see how the city has changed and been impacted. And I guess it's hard to measure because ideally you'd run an experiment in parallel with two cities, one with the rule and one without, but we don't really have that luxury.
Conrad Speckert (00:48:49):
Studies are interesting because studies rely on data. One of the things that I've been constantly studying isto look at the fire statistics, injuries and deaths across Canada and the US and in Europe and to say: "Okay in jurisdictions where you can do this or even just for that building type, is it safer?" But the problem is that fire statistics, in Canada for instance the way the statistics are collected is in categories. So you're either in a category which is multi-unit building below five storeys, and multi-unit building above five storeys, which means that a six storey building and a 30-story, you know, tower are tabulated in the same way. It's what I've been told by some people that do this for a living, it will be impossible to really extract the concrete, solid argument from these statistics about this issue. In the case of Seattle even though since 1977, vthe, the single stair has been legal, the reality is that there are dozens of these buildings, but there aren't many, there aren't thousands, it's not the predominant building typology of the city in the way that it is in Berlin, Paris or Barcelona, where it's everywhere. It's culturally the norm. And that's a whole other conversation around what is the minimum scale of development that people deem profitable? What is the acceptable profit margin? Just a whole bunch of other questions around land assembly, everything else. It would be really easy if we could go to Seattle and just drive down the street and every building was one of these single-stair specials. But they're kind of gems hidden in the midst.
RVLTR (00:50:48):
I'm sure there's still something to learn from it, but it's also a very locale-specific issue, right? You would have to adapt the rules to every province or every city because they don't have all the same needs. Montreal has a lot of two, three-storey walk ups with like a couple units per floor. So they have much more of that high low-rise typology that allows them to have a much greater density than single family homes that you see dominant in most of Toronto.
Conrad Speckert (00:51:26):
It's funny, I live in Montreal right now, and I've been doing this research entirely while living here. But I kind of smile at the fact that Montreal's the place in Canada that needs this code change perhaps the least, precisely because it has a really good housing stock of triplexes. What's also funny is once you start to go in depth, the triplex has this winding steep exterior stair at the front and these spiral fire escapes in the back, which today with the modern code, you cannot do, but there's some really amazing examples from architects that have done triplexes new construction today. And they've been really smart about finding ways to conform with those current safety requirements in Montreal. But the biggest lesson I think that comes from Montreal is that it's colder in winter than Toronto or Vancouver and it snows more, but its stairs are totally acceptable means of egress. But if you go talk to an architect in Toronto and say you're gonna put an exterior stair, everyone gets really worried, because that just seems irrational or unreasonable. They're super unsafe. But in Montreal they're just ingrained [in the culture].
RVLTR (00:52:52):
Is that a cultural thing or is that a code thing? Because if you wanted to do external stairs in Toronto, can you do that or is that not allowed?
Conrad Speckert (00:53:01):
So explicitly in the building code? Yes. You can do exterior stairs, but once you start to sit down with, you know, authorities and perhaps a fire inspector or plans reviewer, sometimes you actually have to explain to them what the difference is between a fire escape and an exterior stair. And oftentimes that becomes a frustrating, long drawn-out headache. And there's a bunch of other ingrained assumptions. But explicitly in the code, yes, you can do exterior stairs. It's just not conventional practice.
RVLTR (00:53:49):
One of the last questions I had for you is about scissor stairs. Aren't those the solution to the problem?
Conrad Speckert (00:54:02):
So scissor stairs are efficient. And in Canada, scissor stairs count as two exits. But in the US actually, scissor stairs do not. So scissor stairs are only allowed to count as one. Scissor stairs are really cheap and efficient ways to build, pretty much every condo glass tower in Vancouver is a scissor stair building. But one comment I would give about scissor stairs is: it's fine when you're in a tall building and you use the elevator anyways, but to carry your groceries up a scissor stair, or to ever bump into your neighbour on a scissor stair is not gonna happen. And in buildings that are three or four stories, five stories, six stories, these kinds of missing middle mid-rise scale to buildings, a scissor stair will have a huge impact on the cost and the quality of the building. Because you have that corridor separation, stairs that use more space and because these projects are so non-competitive already, the difference in your design between a scissor stair and a single stair has a really huge impact. But obviously if you're doing a 10 or 20 story tower, yeah. The scissor stair is the most rational thing to be doing in the code in Canada
RVLTR (00:55:29):
So there's a qualitative aspect to the stairs as well. If you want to build better housing stock because a lot of those interactions happen in the stairs, you were mentioning bumping into your neighbours or helping the grandma that lives upstairs with their groceries. I think there's a qualitative component that we haven't talked about. That's really important in the way those buildings are built. Because maybe if you don't have a two-stair requirement, you can put, I don't know, 10 to 15% more surface area into the main staircase to make it more of a social component of the building. Isn't that the case?
Conrad Speckert (00:56:06):
Yeah, absolutely. Corridor separation is a really detailed question about whether that stair is open to a landing or not. But beyond just the cost and floor plan efficiency, [it's about ] being able to unlock smaller lots and smaller sites to actually be able to develop on them. There's this whole other conversation about livability that with a single stair, you get these units that can be "through" units. So daylight on both sides and cross ventilation. Mike Ellison actually brought up something, which I hadn't thought about yet, which is the question of urban noise. So if you're in a condo building on an arterial or street in Toronto and you have one orientation, and say it's north-south orientation. One side gets a lot of all the noise from the traffic and all the sun and the other side, it gets neither.
RVLTR (00:57:05):
Well, you see it in Paris or even in France, where there are multiple buildings, but they form an entire block and then there's a big courtyard in the middle. The street in the front is very busy and that's usually where you have the kitchen and living room and then the bedrooms are on the courtyard side where everything is super quiet and you still get a bit of sunlight and some direct ventilation. So that makes a lot of sense.
Conrad Speckert (00:57:30):
It's a way more livable way to build. I'm not surprised that in Canada everyone saves up to the point that they commute far enough out of the city until they can afford a detached house and everyone hates condo buildings and rails against them all the time, because it's really hard to build a pleasant and nice apartment building in Canada.
RVLTR (00:57:56):
I can see that point being very true. I think that was a very interesting conversation. I am out of questions anyway, but any last words of wisdom or thoughts that you want to share with the audience?
Conrad Speckert (00:58:09):
One thing I'll just mention is that the way that we're working on this code change right now is not at all to imply a decrease in safety. The code changes are being developed in ways that either meet or exceed the currently acceptable life safety of having two stairs. And there's a really detailed conversation about that. So to anybody that wants to get in touch with me, support the code change,go to the website and you'll find my email address.
RVLTR (00:58:41):
Www.Secondegress.Ca, correct?
Conrad Speckert (00:58:42):
Yep.
RVLTR (00:58:43):
I'll be sure to put that in the show notes.
Conrad Speckert (00:58:47):
And then maybe one other note is, and this really surprised me is that when I started to look into the codes development system in Canada which is the federal body called CCBFC, the Canadian Commission on Building Fire Codes. For a long period of time, there weren't any architects involved in code development on those committees. I smiled because if there aren't any architects participating in the development of our codes - it's mostly engineers people from the association of sprinklers and the concrete association and fire marshals - if there's no architect advocating on behalf of architecture it's no surprise that we end up with with building codes that are architecturally really restrictive.
RVLTR (00:59:35):
And probably not leading to great quality architecture too, because that qualitative aspect that architects are known to bring to the table is gone. If you ask an engineer how to solve a problem, they're gonna go for the most efficient solution, but they're not necessarily gonna think about is that a workable solution from a usability and pleasantness perspective? So yeah, you make a hugely valuable point in saying that and those problems can't be solved by one body or the other [alone]. It really needs to be collaborative. I think people need to talk to each other and have those difficult conversations, but look at the facts. When people collaborate, you can really come up with great solutions and where the sum is greater than the sum of its parts.
Conrad Speckert (01:00:24):
The other point is that the CCBFC right now has a lot on its plate questions around energy and climate. And so right now they're actually having to prioritize really intensely each code change request that they get. And part of the way that they prioritize things is that they ask each province: "What's a priority for you and your province right now?" So that's an opportunity for anybody who's listened to this. There's a whole discussion that needs to be had in each province to say: "This would be really beneficial to the supply of housing in this province, please at the next discussion of provincial authorities with the codes commission, emphasize the importance of this code change request." Because otherwise it will get buried at the bottom of the stack.
RVLTR (01:01:17):
That's a very good point. Well, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to chat. We ended up talking for a lot longer than we initially anticipated, which is totally fine. It was a very interesting conversation, but I think it's time for us to end. Thank you very much. And hopefully this will help you get the word out there as well. Obviously you don't need my permission, but you're welcome and encouraged to use this podcast once it's released to get people to engage with the topic. Even people who don't know, I think we've covered enough ground today for any newbie to really get a much better understanding of what the issue is and how much of a difference that could make.
Conrad Speckert (01:02:00):
I hope so. Well, thank you very much for having me, Arnaud.
RVLTR (01:02:03):
Thank you. And you're welcome.
