[NSolano]

I was looking at some drawings in one of my dad's friends house and he had a drawing of a 15 story building. This building was weird though, the first couple of floors were much bigger than the top floors. the floors kept getting smaller and smaller as they went up. I saw that not all the square footage was present on this drawing, so I guessed like a 1/3 of it. I came up with 456,000 square foot. Do you guys think thats a lil big?? or am I just stupid. I could have sworn that when I read apartment complex drawings there was only like 150,000 square foot in about 120 units. Whats the common size of these type of buildings?

 

[Grumpy]

Most tall tall buildings have a gradual "shrinkage" as they go up.

 

[Cole]

They have too.

Sometimes the basement can get 100' deep.

 

[hatchet]

I (one person on a 22 person staff) helped build a 12 story building with 3 levels of underground parking a few years back with 750,000sf. I guess I don't understand your question. The only real step back on it was on the 3rd, 7th, and 9th floors - might have lost 10,000sf on each floor.. then it went straight up and stepped back in for the mechanical room on the roof. It wasn't an apartment building - was an office building.
Here's a 23 story building we did - residential for 23 floors (7 floors of detached office space) - office space is 136000sf residential was over 200000sf (maybe more - can't remember exactly). http://www.denvercityscape.50megs.com/unionplaza415.jpg
Anyway - the size depends on what the owners want and who they think will be purchasing units from them.