She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. Shes an astronaut. Bert Cooper, Mad Men, season 4, episode 9, The Beautiful GirlsIn 1983, Goldman Sachs opened its own skyscraper at 85 Broad Street in New York City, which cemented the investment banks presence in the citys financial district. This was the era of the open-plan office, lauded for its flexibility and adaptabilityit facilitated the modern way of working, at the time. But what the open plan couldnt have taken into account was the radical change in the way we have worked since the development of the internet and, most importantly, postpandemic. Today we can take meetings from our cell phones, email while doomscrolling in bed, and conduct research 35,000 feet in the air from an airplanes middle seat. Why does the modern office worker need an office?Unfortunately, we previously sunk many billions of dollars and millions of tons of extracted material into building temples to old ways of working. The structures we erected to facilitate the flow of global capital turned out to have a shorter shelf life than we imagined: Goldman Sachs moved into its 1.1 millionsquare-foot headquarters at 85 Broad in 1983. It moved out in 2010, just 27 years later, trading up to 200 West Street, a new building designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partnersless than a mile from Goldman Sachss old home.A view of the project from above at dusk showcases the newly constructed rooftop green spaces. ( Robert Deitchler/Gensler)As of Q4 2024, the commercial real estate company Avison Young reported that New York City has 99.1 million square feet of vacant office space, a record high. In contrast, the city is also breaking records regarding rental vacancy: As reported in the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, its at 1.4 percent, a multidecade low. And most New Yorkers spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, which qualifies them as rent-burdened. Many politicians, architects, and policymakers are asking the obvious question: Why cant we turn our vacant office stock into housing?Demolishing millions of square feet of steel, glass, and concrete is expensive in terms of dollarsand carbon footprint. What if we could save a lot of that material from landfill? Todays office-to-residential conversionsor O2R, if youre in the businesshave been a hot design topic since the dawn of the pandemic. In New York, Metro Loft is a name nearly synonymous with the O2R movement. Starting in 2003 with 63 Wall Street, the developer has pioneered the conversion method. Helmed by Nathan Berman, Metro Loft has taken on the incredible risks associated with converting big buildings. While earlier projects like 63 Wall and 71 Leonard converted older, prewar structures, starting in 2017 the firm was tackling more challenging midcentury office towers. Its most recent conversion has taken shape at 55 Broad. Millions of dollars were needed to acquire the property and millions more to cut shafts for ventilation and light through its inner core. In some midcentury buildings, floor plates can be as deep as 60 feet, meaning that sunlight in these monoliths rarely reaches the inmost parts of the interior. Once illuminated, the floors were divided into dozens of oddly shaped apartments to maximize rentable square footage, with each requiring new plumbing cores to add bathrooms in what used to be a shared per-floor amenity.55 Broad Street, once home to Goldman Sachs, will be converted into residential space under a CetraRuddy design. (CetraRuddy)These improvements are needed to make old offices palatable to luxury renters, but it can work: What the industry first deemed crazy has now earned Berman the title King of FiDi. With the help of architects at CetraRuddy, he transformed 55 Broads warren of cubicles into a maze of 535 apartments.For others, the tough reality is that making housing out of office stock is a lot like sticking a square peg in a round hole. The complex entanglement of legislative red tape, habitable versus occupiable unit code standards, and developer ROI have made this commonsense move hard to stomach for many developers and landlords. And perhaps understandably so: Office towers that sold for over $300 million just a few years ago have changed hands for as little as $8.5 million in 2024. Is O2R the Hail Mary commercial real estate owners are holding their breath for?A rooftop terrace on top of Pearl House with a communal amenity inside. ( Robert Deitchler/Gensler)A bedroom inside a model unit at Pearl House. (Vanbarton Group)Two options have emerged in the attempt to save these increasingly obsolete office spaces, the wallets of developers, and the planet: market-rate O2R conversions and single-room occupancy (SRO) programs. Interestingly, both options are being studied and implemented by Gensler.Making O2R a RealityRobert Fuller and Peter Wang, two designers in Genslers New York office, have become leaders in the emergent field of conversions. Gensler developed software called Conversions+ that generates a scorecard for office buildings whose owners are considering O2R action. Context, building form, location, floor plate size, and local regulations all factor into the score. Creativity and budget can make any building a successful conversion, Fuller explained, but [out of a possible 100 points] its viewed as most eligible if it scores in the 70s or 80s. Conversions+ was first tested in the fall of 2020 as part of a collaboration with Calgary Economic Development, a nonprofit entity in the Canadian city. The algorithm was used to score 6 million square feet of vacant offices in downtown Calgary, and the partnership has resulted in five ongoing conversions, with ten more in the pipeline. But the firms most recent completion of Pearl House, at the time the largest O2R conversion in New York City to date at 160 Water, is turning heads as it takes on the legislative labyrinthand high real estate valuationsof New York City. Originally designed by New Yorkbased firm Hausman & Rosenberg in 1973, the tower used to house offices for AIG. Gensler worked with development partner Vanbarton Group to turn the 525,000-square-foot office tower into 588 new apartments. By cutting blind shafts, creating new rooftop green spaces, and optimizing the buildings envelope for efficiency and operability, the developers have been able to nearly sell out. Beyond the allure of the amenities, Pearl House has set a new standard for O2R methods as well as more sustainable development in New York City.Still, these units are all market rate (although, as AN reported last month, another Gensler O2R conversion, at the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown, will feature affordable units). As of this writing, the most economical studio unit in Pearl House starts at around $3,700 per month. Are there cheaper solutions?The living area inside a unit in Pearl House. (Vanbarton Group)SROs: Radical or Retrograde?Fear not: Gensler has also been involved in a very different type of O2R conversion. Once a popular and affordable living option across U.S. cities, SROs came under fire as real estate prices soared. The often-neglected buildings housing these units were sold and demolished so the land could be redeveloped into more profitable typologies. In Genslers coauthored report with the Pew Charitable Trusts, which was published last October, the authors, quoting a 2018 piece in Bloomberg by Ariel Aberg-Riger, write that between the 1970s and the 1990s alone, the United States lost one million SRO units to conversions and demolitions. But through regulatory reform and the reintroduction of lower-cost residential typologies, the supply of SRO-style housing can beincreased to meet the current needs of renters. The question is: Is this a good thing?Three cities were examined for this first iteration of the study. Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle were selected based on (1) high median rent, (2) high rate of homelessness and housing insecurity, (3) high downtown office vacancy rate, and (4) lack of significant regulatory barriers that would impact the feasibility of the concept.What would an SRO look like today? Well, a lot like a college dorm. This is a typology that prioritizes affordability by making kitchens, bathrooms, and workspaces communal amenities rather than keeping them in private rooms. The SRO results in a small personal space that doesnt sacrifice the essentials. (Maybe you are familiar with YouTuber Van Neistat, who in 2022 recorded a video ode to his SRO in New York, which was 144 square feet, 12 feet on a side. Every square inch was accounted for. Every possession that was in there was important, he told the camera.) While, historically, SROs have done heavy lifting to make cities affordable to new residents, low-income and working-class people, and artists and students, there has been pushback over whether this limited dwelling unit is a good fit for contemporary cities. Reconsidering the SRO invites revisiting feminist and collective visions for city planning and domestic life rather than the modern obsession with convenience and individual consumerism.Gensler test-fit SRO scenarios to see how to convert an office building in Denver. (Courtesy Gensler)In the report, Gensler test-fit SRO scenarios in the three regional markets. It found that 1,232 SRO units would fit in a standard, midcentury Denver office tower that has 31 floors. Each unit was set against the fully glazed curtain-wall facade and would include one twin XL bed, a desk and nightstand, a mini fridge, and a microwave. A proposed plan included in the report shows the SRO room as being 7 feet 6 inches wide and 20 feet long, or 150 square feet. This is shown in contrast to a standard studio layout, which includes a full kitchen and bathroom and measures 14 feet by 31 feet, or 434 square feet.A core tenet of co-living and SROswhich are two different housing configurations but are seemingly combined in the reportis shared resources. Kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry are still available, but you must leave your room. In Denver, four shared kitchens, two living rooms, laundry, and storage are proposed for every floor, each of which has about 40 SRO units. Bathrooms are included too, of course: There are to be two restrooms with three toilets and two sinks each in addition to four single-occupant bathrooms and a central shower facility. Floor plates are often measured in terms of residential efficiency: How much space is given over to individual units? The result of Genslers Denver test-fit is an efficiency of nearly 71 percent, with the remaining 29 percent of the gross floor area dedicated to shared facilities and the buildings core and interior circulation.The big question: How much will it cost? The report estimates between $500 and $1,000, based on the residents income, which is targeted to be between 30 and 40 percent of AMI in Denver for a single person. Adjusting for New York City AMI, these numbers would be $750 to $1,250. Living alone in an old office building could either cost $750 or $3,700. The difference is whether you share a shower, couch, and cooktop with your neighbors.The promise of O2R and SRO conversions is the opportunity to reduce ones carbon footprint and rent burden. We shouldnt keep constructing new buildings when so many sturdy ones sit empty, and our lives shouldnt be weighed down by the artificial scarcity of the real estate market. If you could pay less than $1,000 for a decent apartment in Manhattan, what other things would you do with your one wild and precious life?Emily Conklin, formerly ANs managing editor, is a design historian and critic based in Manhattan.