(05-07-2019, 09:10 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Large indeed. I'm curious as to the pedestrian realm. The picture paint a nice picture, with lots of people about, but reality often does not match renders, and frankly, I'm hoping they just aren't showing sidewalks on the diagram, because there are a bunch missing.
As an unrelated aside, does anyone know why modern buildings are largely square, while older apartment buildings are largely rectangular.
There are many factors as to why buildings are designed this way in contemporary architecture. For commercial and residential property: the design process becomes simplified for architects (in a positive way), cost of materials can drop, the time required to build each floor drops, HVAC becomes more efficient, interior lighting improves, shadows on neighbouring properties improves, there's an increase in flexibility of the interior spaces, the footprint of the structure becomes smaller yet - properly utilizing height - will allow you to fit more a given space. It's just more efficient for certain structures...whereas something like a hospital or school you would want to build more rectangular.