Balconies are a waste of space

Like many young adults living independently in North America, I live in an apartment with a balcony

Like many young adults living independently in North America, I live in an apartment with a balcony. My first reaction when I moved into an apartment with a balcony was, awesome! I get to open the door for some fresh air, sit outside and read, and have my own BBQ. However, I’ve come to believe that in practice most people rarely use their balcony and even less use their BBQ. But is that true and what are the alternatives? In this newsletter, we enjoy exploring potential alternatives to how we live and design our cities.

In the floor plan below, the indoor living space is 751 square feet and the balcony space is 92 square feet which is 11% of the total space. If we had a 6-story building with 12 of these units per floor, balconies would take up 1104 square feet per floor and 6624 square feet across the entire building. For reference, 1104 square feet is enough space for a:

• climbing gym

• small movie theater

• gym

• plunge pool and sauna room

• skate park

• bbq, cooking, and patio area

With that much space per floor, your 6-floor apartment of approximately 144 people could have a room for every single one of the activities above.

With a perhaps slightly more affordable and realistic approach, you could have 3 floors with large shared sectioned offed patios and amenities. The backyard below is 800 square feet and with 300 more square feet and a community in mind, I believe you could come up with some much better layouts.

The other 3 floors could have indoor spaces for co-working, perhaps with a coffee station, a plunge pool and sauna room, and a well-stocked gym. The options are endless and as we begin to explore how much space our balconies really take up I can imagine a dozen, more useful, community-based alternatives that would turn apartment buildings into places that feel like a community. The current situation sometimes feels like a bunch of private dwellings stuck together in which you sometimes walk into each other in the hallway.

Some of the reasons you might argue for a balcony are because they provide:

• A place for you to get some air and sunlight (If you aren’t on the 41st floor and getting blasted by roaring winds)

• An aesthetic appeal to help break up the facades of buildings, I guess?

• A place to garden, which I totally understand (Even if an alternative could be an 1100 square foot garden on one of the floors)

• Natural ventilation, in case your windows aren’t working?

• A view, in case your windows are fogged up?

And my argument for alternatives to balconies aside, balconies:

• Can pose a risk to small animals and children

• Require regular maintenance

• Can increase building costs

• Are often used for storage and purposes that would be better solved with an additional indoor room

• Can increase heat loss if not designed well

• Are often not that private at all anyway

While I don’t think we should remove balconies from all units, I do believe that many people would prefer to have an additional room in their space or a well-stocked activity space to strengthen the building or floor’s community. As always, there is no best solution for everyone’s needs but I would personally love to have one extra room in our space or a shared 1100 square-foot community space on my floor or one or two floors away. What would you want? And if you had 1100 square feet to work with, how would you set up the space?