Residential buildings are constantly under attack—not by barbarians or marauding bandits, but by a force far more subtle and insidious. The most tenacious enemy of a residential building is not fire or structural collapse—though a build…
There’s more than enough to worry about living in a major American city without having to worry about being conked on the head by falling debris. That’s the kind of urban hazard Local Law 11 was created to address, requiring all buildin…
In most buildings—even otherwise well-run, well-managed ones—building staff and administration can sometimes get a little bit lax in their day-to-day maintenance duties. Equipment doesn’t get serviced. Paint peels. Dust and dirt accumula…
The boards of some co-op and condo buildings pride themselves on not raising their monthly maintenance fees for years at a time. At first glance, this might seem like a good thing—after all, low fees are appreciated by residents and can…
Push aside old notions of ineffective security officers. The security officer of the future has arrived. Today’s security officer may be navigating tours on a Segway to patrol airports, transit stations, manufacturing facilities, apartm…
The expression “Better safe than sorry” is known by everyone. As apartment dwellers, it is important not to take advantage of the sense of security felt by having a doorman posted at the door or hallways lined with sprinklers and let ou…
Digital cameras…camera phones… smartphones. These terms weren’t even in our vocabulary ten years ago, yet today, many New Yorkers carry this pocket-sized technology with them everywhere they go. One of the goals of the administration is …
To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” but in this case, the reverse is true. When I started my design firm 26 years ago, the idea of a company specializing in designing common areas of…
So your condo or co-op’s management company is getting ready to hire a new service employee. It could be a doorman, it could be a maintenance man, it could be a swimming-pool supervisor. Is this a simple process, or a complicated one? A…
Buckminster Fuller, a thinker, inventor, artist, mathematician, (the list goes on,) once said, “People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.” Fuller, most famous f…