How does one make a vertical opening—a hole—in a single floor, or through multiple floors, while still being in compliance with the 2024 International Building Code (IBC)? This question is quite important, since architects like making holes in buildings. Even so, a code-compliant answer is surprisingly difficult to track down, especially since the fundamental fire-safety requirement for compartmentalization precludes the use of vertical openings and requires that all horizontal floor assemblies be continuous. In other words, at least at first glance, it appears that holes are not permitted at all.

An admittedly exaggerated image of a vertical opening (hole) in a floor. Image created by Jonathan Ochshorn using PhotoShop.

Fortunately, this basic prohibition of vertical openings is modified in countless ways. Yes, code language in the 2034 IBC, found in Section 711.2.2 of the IBC, starts with the requirement for absolute continuity of fire-resistance-rated horizontal assemblies (so that a fire is more likely to be contained within its floor of origin), but a rather important exception immediately follows: “Assemblies shall be continuous without vertical openings, except as permitted by this section and Section 712.” Practically speaking, Section 712 of the IBC provides the architect with various ways to create vertical openings that, at least in theory, provide protection against the spread of fire in ways that are more-or-less equivalent to the ideal of continuity in fire-resistance-rated horizontal floor assemblies. (Nonfire-resistance-rated floor assemblies, per Section 711.3.2, have similar requirements for continuity and allow the same exceptions.)

Of course, one can always make a hole or “shaft” legal by protecting it with a “shaft enclosure”—such things are covered in Section 713 of the IBC. But to make a real hole in a floor—to visually and spatially connect two or more levels by removing a portion of a floor-ceiling assembly—one of the protection methods listed in Section 712 must, in general, be used. Continue reading my paper on vertical openings in floors. Or go directly to my new and improved vertical opening calculator!

An email solicitation from a group called SARG (Spatial Analytics Research Group) ended up in my junk folder. I retrieved it on the same day of their Zoom meeting in which they asked to distinguish between architecture and building, i.e., they asked: “What is (not) architecture?” So I quickly sent off the following response:

The idea that architecture is something “added” to mere building presumes that the two terms (architecture and building) are different instances of the same class of objects, where, per Ruskin, architecture “impresses on [the form of the mere building] certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary.”

But this formulation is wrong, for two reasons. The first is the obvious one: Ruskin was thinking of literal decorative or sculptural “additions” to a structure’s masonry shell, so that the notion that such things were “otherwise unnecessary” could be sustained — the utilitarian functionality of such structures would certainly survive without such embellishment. But what of architecture without decorative embellishment? Ruskin’s argument falls apart when confronted with modernist aesthetics.

The second problem with the formulation, even abstracting from the requirement that what is added be “unnecessary,” is that manipulating formal constituent elements of buildings is ubiquitous, albeit within wide range of aesthetic formulations corresponding to the various class-based social and cultural strata within modern societies.

In other words, the distinction between building and architecture is simply the snobbery of connoisseurship, no different from the condemnation of any number of working-class preferences by elite tastemakers. Like Adorno’s condemnation of jazz.

I wrote an op-ed that was just published in The Architect’s Newspaper with the rather unwieldy, but nevertheless accurate, title, “Bad Building: Architecture’s Aesthetics Should Support, rather than Sabotage, a Building’s Function.” The argument in the op-ed derives from my book, Building Bad: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics and Damaged by Expression.

I’ll be giving a talk on “Control Layers, Abstraction, and Utilitarian Dysfunction,” based on my book, Building Bad: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics and Damaged by Expression. Details follow:

Date: March 3, 2022, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Format: Zoom meeting / Webinar

This continuing education program is FREE for CSI members, and $20 for non-members (Notice: Any money raised will go towards the Edward Goldberg Memorial Scholarship Fund). This program has AIA Continuing Education Credits PENDING (1 LU/HSW Credit).

Sponsored by the Syracuse Chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI)

Sign up to attend the talk here.

Information about the book is here.