Drying floor

When visiting the World Heritage housing estates, you will notice that most of the larger blocks of flat (or monopitch) roofed apartments have a row of small windows on a compact top floor. This is a communal attic that many residents used to dry their laundry. Most of these squat "drying floors" were just over two metres high and thus of limited use as living space. Some tenants still dry their laundry in them today, although there are no other practical uses – permanent storage and rentals are forbidden due to fire safety regulations. Nevertheless, drying floors are still practical for energy efficiency, because the attic space acts as an extra insulating layer and limits heat loss from the upper floors of the building. An exception is Falkenberg Garden City, where all the homes were fitted with gable roofs when the estate was built in 1913-1916.

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