Rachel Johnson

Mixed Use & Hybrid Buildings: Why theyre better for our cities

As city populations become more and

more dense, the answer to
diversifying urban areas lie with
mixed use buildings. Mixed use
buildings can be either low-rise or
high-rise, but for this paper we will
focus on high-rise buildings in denser
urban settings. Mixed use buildings
bring together different building uses,
or programs, into one property,
allowing a vertical rather than
horizontal arrangement of residential,
retail, commercial, and educational
space as seen in Figure 11. For
practical and social reasons, this Figure 1: Comparison of Mixed & Single Use
Buildings
arrangement is becoming the
more dominant strategy for development in large cities. Hybrid buildings are
an innovation of mixed-use, which focuses on creating a city within a city.
There has been little research done on the impact of mixed-use and
particularly hybrid buildings on cities and their inhabitants. This paper aims
to shed light on how mixed use benefits a city as well as the developer, and
the progress made in mixed-use variations.

The Emergence of Mixed Use

Mixed use buildings were exceedingly

popular at the beginning of the 20th
century, combining residential, retail,
and commercial space in one building.
However, with the introduction of the
automobile, people began to live a lot
farther from where they worked,
segregating building uses into different
sectors and creating the suburbs.
Figure 22 shows this movement
through a land use map of Chicago and
its surrounding areas. Red, purple, and
yellow marked areas represent
commercial, retail, and industrial

1 "Criteria for Defining and Measuring Tall Buildings." CTBUH. N.p., n.d. Web
areas, respectively. Green is residential. Chicago shows the remnants of this
era of exodus, where residential areas surround in suburbs, far from the
commercial and retail hub of the city. In the 1980s, mixed use began to make
a come back, in order to economically revitalize and diversify dense urban
areas.

Reasons for Mixed Use Buildings in Cities

Reduced Life Cycle Cost

Cost is the primary factor to consider when developing a site or a block in a

city for a building, Cost drives the architecture of the building, its systems,
materials, and its functions. Developers are often concerned mainly with first
costs, which includes the cost of permitting, design, construction, and
marketing. Though a mixed use building may not decrease any of these first
costs, the life cycle costs of the Figure 2: Current Chicago Land Use
building can be significantly Map
decreased with mixed use.

Mixed use allows the integration of building systems for its different uses,
allowing for building systems that promote sustainability, which can further
reduce the long term energy and refurbishment costs. In addition, mixed use
buildings allow for a 24-hour use of the building: commercial/retail/education
during the day, residential at night.3 Mixed use buildings create
environments where everything is within reach. A persons work and home
can be within a 10-minute walk of each other, while also enjoying the night
life and activities that retail spaces provide. With these environmental
factors, tenants are more permanent than temporary, securing the life time
of the building.

Efficient Use of Space

Cities are becoming more and more dense. According to the World Health
Organization, cities will hold 70% of the worlds population by 2050.4 Instead
of spreading out, building programs must go up. With mixed use buildings,
towers do not only have to include just office space or just residential space.
There do not have to be buildings solely dedicated to retail or restaurants,
gyms or health centers. These can be integrated together so that resources
can be made readily available to all surrounding people.

2 "Zoning of Chicago." 2nd City Zoning. N.p., n.d. Web.

3 "The Challenges and Benefits of Mixed-Use Facilities." Buildings: Smarter Facility
Management, 4 Nov. 2009. Web.
4 Zamorano, Luis, and Erika Kulpa. "People-Oriented Cities: Mixed-Use Development Creates
Social and Economic Benefits." World Resources Institute, 23 July 2014. Web.
 A new phenomenon known as food deserts5 is sprouting up, mostly found
in impoverished areas, but also as a result of areas containing only
residential, commercial, or retail buildings, with no intermixing of those
types. This makes it difficult for someone living in a residential area to find a
grocery story or restaurant, particularly if they are limited in their means of
transportation. Due to poor city planning and the closing of businesses, fresh
food is becoming more scarce in some areas of the United States. Mixed use
buildings may be an answer to this, providing buildings that keep more
permanent tenants and bring in economic vitality and resources to those
around them.

Environmental Impacts

Mixed use buildings bring home and work closer together, decreasing the
reliance on automobiles and making walking on foot, bicycling, and using
public transport more popular. Less cars on the road means less pollution. In
Mumbai, the main residential area is located 10 miles from the city and as a
result, car ownership has increased by 3,700% in the past 60 years. New York
City has a more mixed use style of building planning, which has increased in
the past decade. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of commuters relying
on cars dropped from 90% to 59%.6 By creating an environment that reduces
the reliance on automobile transportation, the amount of pollution due to
cars will decrease.

The Future of Mixed Use Buildings

5 Gallagher, Mari. "USDA Defines Food Deserts." American Nutrition Association. Nutrition
Digest, n.d. Web.
6 Zamorano, Luis, and Erika Kulpa. "People-Oriented Cities: Mixed-Use Development Creates
Social and Economic Benefits." World Resources Institute, 23 July 2014. Web.
 Future mixed use buildings include
the 3 World Trade Center, set to
open in early 2018. The building will
include 150,000 square feet of retail
and 2.5 million square feet of of
office space.7 The Millennium Tower
in Boston, which just opened, has
442 units of residential space and
220 thousand square feet of retail
and office space. These buildings
are considered mixed use but they
are a very basic form of mixed use. With mixed use buildings becoming more
prevalent, there have been improvements upon the concept of mixed use.

One of these improvements is the idea of a hybrid building. Some could

consider a mixed use building to simply be different programs stacked on top
of each other like blocks, as seen in Figure 1. Hybrid buildings integrate
these programs up the height of the building, often including more than one
program on a single floor, represented by different colors in Figures 3 and 48.
With this method, there is a juxtaposition and overlap of program spaces and
uses. There is also the incorporation of more public spaces throughout the
building, really creating the idea of a city within a city.
Figure 3: Elevation of Hybrid
Building

7 "3 WORLD TRADE CENTER." Office Buildings. N.p., n.d. Web.

8 Fernndez, Aurora, Javier Mozas, and Javier Arpa. This Is Hybrid: An Analysis of Mixed-Use
Buildings. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain: + T Architecture, 2011. Print.
Hybrid buildings is a relatively
new concept but has been
applied to buildings across the
world. One of the most noted
examples is the Linked Hybrid
in Beijing, completed in 20099.
This hybrid building includes
644 apartments, commercial
zones, a hotel, cinema, schools,
and underground parking. The
buildings include some or all of
these programs and are linked
by bridges. These bridges bring
public spaces up into the
building, an essential element
of hybrid buildings. These
public spaces make the
building feel inclusive and allow people to move freely through the different
uses and spaces. As cities become more and more dense, these city within a
city environments bring everything that a city dweller needs within a readily
accessible space.

Another example is the Centre Georges Pompidou10, located in the 4th

Arrondissement of Paris, France. The building was commissioned as a
transitional building to bring together the burgeoning art and culture of Paris
during the 1970s and the surrounding old bourgeois buildings. The building
includes large, open flexible spaces that allow for moveable exhibits for the
Museum of Modern Art, as well as additional space for 2 cinemas, a
performance space and lecture theatre for a music school, a public library,
and an underground parking garage. With no residential space, this building
is still considered hybrid in that it Figure 4: Floor Plans of Hybrid Building
integrates these different
programs so that each plays off on one another. A visitor to the museum
might go and check out the public library. A patron in a restaurant nearby
might go to see a movie in the cinema and then decide to check out the
library on the floor above. Hybrid buildings are not only about the number of
programs within the building, but also how they interact with one another
and bring people to cross paths with one another as they move from one to
another.

A Lasting Impact

9 "LINKED HYBRID." STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS. N.p., n.d. Web.

10 "Discover the Centre Pompidou!" Centre Pompidou. N.p., n.d. Web.
Mixed use is changing our cities. What they offer is a solution to the
increasing population of cities around the world. They provide decreased
long term and life cycle costs as well as a strategy for using land more
efficiently. Mixed use buildings provide economic stability to areas, providing
24-hour use of the building, keeping tenants more permanent. This strategy
also decreases the distance between home and work, putting more people
on foot, bikes, or public transport than in cars, decreasing the amount of
pollution they contribute. Hybrid buildings are a unique form of mixed use,
which integrate different programs together. These buildings emphasize the
city within a city, which as cities become denser, are increasingly important
to promote the welfare of the city by providing diverse public and private
spaces within reach.