Social Workout

Take the Stairs

Architects Suddenly Hot for Fitness

Elevators out. Stairwells in. In case you missed the "Fit Building" memo, the cool kid architects are lately mixing some fitness in with their aesthetics. Notabable and noted examples include Renzo Piano's still-relatively-new New York Times Building, wherein the stairwells are on the edge of the building, encased in glass, and feature spectacular views of, well, the Port Authority. But you get the point. “I had no idea until recently how many regulatory agencies are working against the notion of fitness in buildings,” said starchitect Bruce Fowle -- who also worked on The Times building -- to Metropolis. An even fresher example is the New Cooper Union building in Manhattan, designed by Thom Mayne. "The social heart of the building is a vast internal staircase, which sweeps from the lobby all the way to the fourth floor." writes Nicolai Ourousoff in The Times.