The kind where nobody involved gives a fuck and it shows.
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Actually a pretty attractive price for the area.
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Triangles are strong.
Triangles require a diagonal.
This has been a thing in buildings since the Middle Ages.
(That said … the building isn’t that tall, and doesn’t appear to be that old. It is odd that it requires bracing, unless it really is an old warehouse kind of thing, which has been gentrified)
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You buy it without complaint at the discounted ask of $1m … and then rent a plasma torch from Home Depot the day you move in. Everyone knows there’s a healthy safety margin engineered into the design. Bonus, after cutting that beam out, you get somewhere to store your kayak paddles.
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When I first saw this, I thought: Wow! This cat owner really goes above and beyond the call of Meow, to put up a scratching ramp like that… then I read the article. They should really wrap this thing in rope and call it cat-friendly! 
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Cat deposit is an extra $50k
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Next year everyone will be requesting a “beam feature” in their kitchen or bathroom. What’s in store for 2020? Some are predicting kitchen floors with fire escape ladders in the middle of the floor that go nowhere or used airplane engines piled in the corner (three minimum)
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A shear wall is an excellent substitute for a triangular structure.
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Structurally, but not financially or aesthetically.
But that’s beside the point: the beam is in the room. You might wish it weren’t, but it’s there now. What are you going to do about it is the only question left. And “pretend it isn’t there” is not the answer I’d buy from Vanna for $1M.
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Kate Wagner frequently observes that the exteriors of mcmansions are not designed, but instead emerge from the demands of the the interior-- which is itself a horrible
mismash of design elements. dictated by the demands of houseflipping shows.
A proper loft is constrained by the existing exterior structure-- traditionally a converted factory, hence the exposed pipes, the high ceilings, the open floorplan, the “loft” itself.
But in a mcmansion, an inflexible interior plan changes the building. Here, this same inflexible interior plan meets a brick wall, and an I beam, and those things can’t simply adapt
I guess they don’t pay creative types enough to be really creative.
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God. it. is. so. awful.
Beam aside that is one ghastly ugly apartment. Everything in it looks cheap “dressed up” as classy, with some truly horrid floor plans, and then you see the outside!
I think the beam must have been required at the last minute during the construction phase. Surely no one is quite dumb enough to sign that “choice” off during the design stage. But that they seem to have spent 0 fucking effort to design around it once the problem was identified is truly appalling.
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The listing neglected the beam.
You neglected to say that this is one block away from the Folsom Street Fair – this is in the heart of the gay leather scene in San Francisco!
A little pedantic, but that is a brace and not a beam.
A brace transfers load almost exclusively in compression or tension whereas a beam is designed for combinations of bending and axial loads.
And it is there no doubt for seismic lateral loads.
Whether it was a seismic retrofit or part of the original structure is unknown.
But architecturally?
What nonsense.
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If a building in San Francisco or other seismically active areas is substantially remodeled, the greater demands from seismic loading from recent code changes require substantial braces to be added even for two or three story buildings.
The seismic lateral loading can be quite large.
As for why the brace is in the middle of the room, perhaps the architect viewed that as a feature?
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Oh come on, it’s a fun slide for the tiny people that live in the cupboard.
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Where I live, we have exactly the same issue.
At first blush, I’d say the engineer put it there to meet strength requirements, with architectural considerations taking a distinct backseat.
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It is a condo-ization of an existing building. Look at that barn-shaped roofline. A new building would have a flat roof. They’ve dressed up the exterior really well to look new, but the bones are vintage and this particular condo is in what used to be the attic - my guess, the beam is a truss.
If it is a truss, doing that will cause the roof to push the wall out. Not just your wall, everyone’s wall. Over time the whole building comes apart at the seams.
Having looked at far, far too many crappy bungalows in the process of finding the house we eventually bought, I can say that this kind of nonsense is par for the course when someone decides to make an apartment out of an attic or basement space. Design by contractor, or worse, design by landlord.
I vividly remember basement “apartments” where, for example, the door to the bathroom was five foot six in height due to a six inch step up to get into the room, or where you had to duck under a five foot six ceiling to get into the kitchen, or, in one particularly bizarre example, where there was a square hole in the wall of the bathroom giving a lovely view of one leg of the L-shaped living room from the bidet.
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There’s not really much of leather scene there except for the weekend of Folsom. It’s not a very appealing neighborhood to live in though, IMO. Busy streets, commercial/industrial feeling.
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Kite in a tree, kid says “rats”. Sort of a metaphor for beam in a kitchen.
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