This Texan has had several opportunities over the past six years to meet housing architects and developers worldwide. While our focus has always been the United States — the world's number one real estate market — we do have our sights set on upending the feasibility process not just on American shores, but worldwide.
This article will attempt to show major deltas between International Building Code driven planning (what TestFit has built its moat around) and the rest of the world.
Standing On The Shoulders of Giants
We start this journey with Norway, where Autodesk's Spacemaker was born out of a necessity to have buildings conform to absolutely demanding standards — for apartment units these include legally required access to light, reductions for noise, and a smattering of other things that would make an American developer's eyes water.
Dual Aspect Units
This unit type only really occurs in the US when there is an "outside corner." In many European markets, dual-aspect units — units with windows on two exterior walls — are a legal requirement. This single constraint reshapes what a viable building floor plate can look like, and in turn reshapes the entire feasibility calculus.
The world is building housing under wildly different rules. Understanding those rules is the first step to building software that works across them.