Four significant cultural shifts are driving the evolution of multifamily design. Today, developers and architects must create spaces that serve the remote work trend, meet the demand for wellness amenities, keep up with changing sustainability and technology standards and create communities that socially engage their residents.
How Hybrid Work Schedules Have Changed Design
The shift to remote and hybrid work has profoundly influenced design offerings and space planning at an unprecedented pace in multifamily developments. Before the shift to full-time or partial work from home, the average size of most urban multifamily units was around 750 square feet.
This average has necessarily increased, allowing many apartment dwellers to expand their living spaces to accommodate a home office. As a result, developers are building larger, more flexible units with ample square footage to accommodate integrated workspaces.
Despite the return-to-office mandates seen in many sectors, remote work is here to stay. The multifamily market must continue to acknowledge a resident’s need to be productive within the confines of the residential living unit.
Next-Gen Amenities in Demand
A highly competitive market has created an amenity arms race to stay competitive in hot markets, and the competition has become much more nuanced than the simple checklist of basic offerings of decades past.
Providing a gym, business center and clubhouse no longer differentiates a property. Prospective tenants want a curated, consistent experience with a point of view that relates to and enhances their daily lives.
Designers combine themes of fitness, wellness, mindfulness, sustainability, community and tech adoption to fit the target demographic on a project-by-project basis. Amenities must be optimized to best fit the market demographics and tastes of the target renter.
The most successful and exclusive communities offer a carefully selected suite of services coupled with programming from local partners such as fitness trainers, food and beverage operators, wellness and holistic health providers and local entertainment.
Smart building features and technology integration are also prevalent in upscale developments. They offer keyless entry, virtual gaming rooms, enhanced comfort and lighting systems, building management apps and thoughtfully designed user-experience frameworks, which set many projects apart.
Managing the constant stream of deliveries has also become a differentiating factor, with high-end properties offering a digital or personal concierge approach. This concierge service is sometimes expanded to manage community events, culinary demonstrations, well-being programming and pet services.
Despite the trends toward tech and service, one factor remains the same: abundant and well-programmed outdoor spaces that fit within the vision of the overall property profile are unrivaled in driving excitement and demand.
Multifamily Projects Target Different Demographic Groups
As urban multifamily markets across the country mature, we see more specialization in demographics. The most competitive offerings target specific age and interest groups.
Amenities vary among active adult communities, high-energy fitness and coffee-fueled urban infill projects, mindfulness- and wellness-oriented properties or cutting-edge tech-savvy buildings, which sometimes partner with short-term rental or hotel operators to leverage maximum occupancy.
Future-Proofing Multifamily
Looking ahead, parking, outdoor spaces and expansion are key factors driving design and planning decisions to ensure today’s developments are effective for the future.
Demand for on-site parking will continue to diminish as code requirements are reduced and maximums or parking caps are introduced. This trend is further motivated by the challenging and expensive proposition of car ownership in many urban markets.
Ride-sharing platforms and other forms of public transportation, including last-mile solutions and micro-mobility, have lessened the need for vehicle ownership to the point where many projects are building a specific parking ratio to satisfy equity or financing partners rather than the property’s end-users.
The rise of autonomous vehicles further cements this trend, offering opportunities to reduce car storage as a component of multifamily development. With fewer parking requirements as a future certainty, the design process must consider accommodations for converting or repurposing these components.
Planning a parking structure with expanded floor-to-floor heights, eschewing park-on ramps for flat plate garages with external speed ramps and carefully considering project stacking and bay depths provide an opportunity to convert structured parking to future residential units or office spaces.
Additionally, the volume of pick-up and drop-off traffic at residential lobbies will continue to grow. It is necessary to consider enlarging vehicular access to building entries in a format akin to hotel or hospitality projects. This will handle the volume of residents who access their transport from the front door rather than the parking deck.
A Greener Future for Multifamily Living
A focus has recently been placed on sustainability for multifamily housing amid demands for a low-carbon environment, with greater importance placed on occupant health and well-being.
Industry surveys have shown that residents want to live in buildings designed and executed with sustainability features at the forefront. An AMLI Residential survey of 3,500 apartment residents found that 80 percent of the respondents believed living in a green building benefits their health. More than 60 percent said they would pay a premium for a sustainable community.
Embedding sustainable decisions in the design of these properties impacts the marketing strategy. Many projects make their sustainable features highly visible, woven into the project ethos and storyline.
Turning Offices into Homes
The shift to hybrid and fully remote working, combined with the decline of the speculative commercial office market, created an opportunity to convert underused office buildings into multifamily or mixed-use developments.
While conceptually this seems like a simple proposition, there are a variety of challenges to overcome to create a marketable and profitable office-to-residential conversion.
First, several physical constraints must exist to make a successful conversion project work. Office and residential buildings have very different aspect ratios related to their footprints, with office buildings being much deeper and larger and residential buildings being thinner and narrower. This means that some of the center of office floors lack daylight and are not leasable in a residential environment.
Furthermore, retrofitting office buildings with the plethora of plumbing and HVAC services needed for residential use is costly. The building façade design can also be an issue, with many residential unit layouts not being compatible with fully glazed office facades or ribbon windows. Balconies, commonly provided in residential projects, are also usually not included in the vintage of office buildings being considered for conversion.
Many markets have a competitive crop of newly purpose-built multifamily buildings. They have more prestige and curb appeal than a ’60s or ’70s office building in a potentially under-activated neighborhood, which impacts ROI and causes these projects to take discounts on rents.
The perfect conversion product is a historic office building with vintage appeal, a thin profile floor plate that converts well to residential layouts and operable, residential-scaled windows in a district with vibrant amenities.
While demand for the multifamily market softened from its torrid pace a few years ago, this asset class will rebound as the surge in inventory dwindles and cooling inflation triggers interest-rate reductions.
Along with an upward trajectory in demand, this sector will continue to evolve as developers, designers and builders create new and diverse approaches to multifamily living. We look forward to seeing the future of this market unfold as more and more high-quality residential projects fill out and re-invigorate our built environment.
Nathan Wilcox, AIA, LEED AP, leads The Beck Group’s design team in Austin, Texas. He focuses on architectural innovation and business development. The Beck Group provides commercial construction and architecture services and is based in Dallas.