FAR means Floor Area Ratio, a formulaic number
derived from the Zoning Resolution for each building
site which sets, approximately, the number of floors
a building may have in relation to the area of the building
lot.
Under FAR, a building whose "footprint" covers more of the
building lot are may have fewer floors, thus be more squat,
than one that covers less of the lot, thus more slender and
taller. The floor area of the building, however, remains the
same.
FAR is another of those magical development tricks to
appear to control development, but is often rejiggered
during now almost universal negotiations to exceed
FAR. There is a small, lucrative industry composed of
zoning consultants who sell negotiation services to
developers -- many of those consultants are former
governmental officials.
A project which is not negotiated to be bigger, is termed
"as of right," that is, it requires no review by community
district (neighborhood) planning boards -- usually opposed
to bigger anything -- and may be sized as provided by the
Zoning Resolution.
"Air rights" is another magical trick to transfer zoning
rights from one site to another, especially favored for
"saving" historic landmarks by transferring their unused
zoning rights -- buildable area -- to an adjacent or nearby
site. But not only landmark sites are abused this way,
any site can have its "air rights" sold to another site.
Thus you see landmarks overshadowed, literally, by
extra-large nearby structures, as if context did not
matter, that nobody will notice the diminution of the
landmark into a tourist-photo vision-delimited postcard.
Still, air rights transfer is not as bad as the save-the-facade,
gut-the-interior, pack the site with visitor accommodations,
landmark pseudo preservation. And tacky false muntins, and
really dumb moving the carcass to a new site (nobody will
know the difference), and HHP/Polshekian falsely decrepit
additions pretending to be as landmarkian as the cadaverine
madeovered "original."
As if any building can be an Original outside rhetoric of
the groupie, er, curator, er, real estate David Blaine.
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send
mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send
mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives:
http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
