Would you live in a high-rise apartment? Or any apartment? David Killick tries it out.

For millions of people around the world, living in an apartment is the norm.

Forget mowing the lawn or looking after the garden; there isn’t one. You may have a balcony – if you are lucky. You had better like lifts, or be prepared to get mighty fit traipsing up and down the stairs – maybe 20 or 30 stories. With groceries. Oh, and you had better have a head for heights.
Home life is a permanent high. But is it a good way to live?

Imagine perhaps two or three thousand people – a whole suburb – living literally on top of one another. Vertical living certainly saves on space. But there are downsides, too.

Some apartments are tiny, like one I visited in Hong Kong, occupied by a whole family jammed into a space no bigger than most people’s garage. Even our friends, who lived in an upmarket apartment, also in Hong Kong, made do with a cupboard-size kitchen and miniscule living room. They had nice harbor views but no balcony.

Staying in a Soviet-era high-rise in Riga, Latvia, was an interesting experience. The dim, dingy lobby opened into a narrow, creaky lift. Would it survive the upward trip, one more time? Plumbing was a bit adventurous, too, but the apartment had extra thick double glazing, and a constant gale of hot air – possibly heated by nuclear energy – wafted through the whole building. Very welcome in a country where winter temperatures can plummet to minus 40C.

Other apartments are for plutocrats. Tycoons, pop stars, and royalty choose to stay in penthouse suites in the world’s elite hotels, where location and prices are both stratospheric.

Not all apartments are high-rises. Some complexes manage to be whole communities with shared facilities and occupants relish a village-like atmosphere. Not worrying about maintenance is a boon. When I lived in Germany, my complex had a local shop, tennis courts, a shared laundry area, and a bike shed. Some places even have vege gardens.

On a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur we traveled with some friends and their family and shared an apartment. The price was great. The apartment was spacious – 153 square meters, about the same as a fair-sized suburban house – with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, including an ensuite, and two balconies.

It also had idiosyncrasies, like no hot water in the kitchen. You had to boil the jug. The reason being, that until recently, no house in Malaysia had hot water in the kitchen, only in the bathroom – so who would need it?

Plumbing was also novel, requiring pressing a button to heat the shower each time. The air con – a necessity – was also quirky.

The balcony wasn’t perfectly level. Apparently the builders had been called back several times. They never used a spirit level.

There was no fourth floor, or 14th, or 24th – instead these floors were numbered 3A, 13A, and 13A. Why? Because in Chinese, the number four sounds like the word for “death.”

I had no qualms about staying on the 13th floor but I have to admit I wasn’t that keen to stay out on that balcony too long. After the Christchurch earthquake, any high-rise makes me nervous. I know of people who experienced being thrown around from side to side. I hear being in the police station and the PriceWaterhouseCoopers building were white-knuckle rides. Some buildings swayed several meters. And I know of a woman trapped in a lift for hours before being rescued.

Although Kuala Lumpur is not on a major plate boundary, Sumatra, to the west, has experienced big earthquakes, and I read that tall buildings in KL have swayed, causing alarm. I decided not to enlighten my fellow travelers with that snippet prior to our trip.

As for being nervous about heights, I was not terribly reassured either by the Aussie apartment owner’s cheery comment that he couldn’t understand people’s concern about high buildings when they were perfectly happy to fly in an aircraft.

The highest I’ve been was the observation deck of New York City’s World Trade Center, located on the 107th floor and 400m in the air. That was a few months before 9/11. I still love visiting New York and didn’t mind going to the “Top of the Rock” – the Rockefeller Center – earlier this year for a splendid view of the city.

I think the likelihood of high-rises catching on in Christchurch in any significant way post-quake is about as likely as the Queen parachuting into Cathedral Square. Just cajoling people to go back into high-rises will be tricky enough.

Indeed, a survey conducted by the University of Canterbury of 10-year olds published this month [April 28] revealed their worst fear was living in a city apartment – kids value space.

However, lower-rise apartment complexes can offer a rewarding lifestyle – if they are designed well. Perhaps four to five story buildings, based on a version of traditional vernacular architecture, would work better here.

When the fire alarm went off suddenly in the KL apartment, my heart jumped. The last time I had heard that sound was in the center of Christchurch on February 22. Everyone calmly and quickly prepared to evacuate. Then a smiling face appeared saying it was only a test, they happened all the time, and everyone ignored them. The stairs were handy, but there were no safety notices. In Hong Kong during an alarm, our friends had used the stairs, only to find the emergency doors locked. Yikes!

There are other pluses with high-rise apartment living, like good security – but you need to carry ID and swipe cards everywhere you go. In KL, former Gurkha soldiers guarded our apartment complex, and saluted smartly every time we drove or walked past. We had three swimming pools. The kids loved them, and so did we. We also enjoyed lovely landscaped grounds including a maze. There was also a tennis court and a gym.

Some apartments – or friends’ Hong Kong one, for example – also have local shops and other facilities.

High-rises are sprouting up fast all over Asia and other developing countries. For many impoverished slum-dwellers they are a quantum leap forward – just like London’s high-rise towers were after the devastation of World War 2, or Paris’s HLMs (Habitation a Loyer Moderés, or low-rental housing).

In their ultimate form, high-rises are an expression of mid 20th century French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s vision of a city in the sky.

But I can’t help feeling these truly international architectural creations can also become anonymous. You can live with 3000 others but never know your neighbors.

Ultimately, neighborhoods and communities matter, but we still need our own space. Our requirements for space vary from country to country, from lots (New Zealand, Australia, the United States), to less (Britain and Europe) to much less (Asia).

Getting the balance right is a challenge, both for architects and town-planners.