Kitchenette

Reply to: Even if the columns are already in the basement, you can still add another one under the place where you want a column upstairs as long as there isn't a door in the way.. If the basement walls haven't been installed, the slab could be cut and a new footing pad poured and then a steel post added. Your architect should have thought of it long ago. I've done projects where all of the original footings and posts had to be abandoned and new ones installed. Le Cobusier's only building in the US is the Carpenter Center at Harvard. He was not an architect in the US so his name was shown as "designer" on the sign out front. There are some very tall slender columns that support part of the building. They were too thin to build of reinforced concrete so steel columns were wrapped in concrete. My structural design professor was the engineer who did the structural design.

Q

Reply to: I hope JDS's solution for no columns works. If you have to have columns, I'd want them to look like they made sense. That might actually mean more columns, not fewer. For example, framing out the dining area on each corner and having a coffered ceiling (or similar) in that space would give the columns some kind of purposeful look, rather than looking like a random placement. There are still going to be some unfortunate and awkward spots, like the spot to the left of the bottom left column, and the possible pinch point to the left of the top left column. (You would want to make that counter to the left of the dining space shallower. I would do that regardless, so it's not a hip-bumper sticking out past that wall.) I would work with your architect (and those on this forum) to either eliminate the columns or make them look purposeful.

Q