Loft Apartment

No, nothing official.

“Loft” used to refer to the upper floor of a building – the area under the roof; the “attic.” It comes from a Middle English word meaning air (the same root as the German word for air: “luft”). I suppose these were often converted for residential usage, so “loft apartment” referred to an apartment in the attic (this is an assumption on my part).

As industrial buildings were converted to apartments, those apartments had some common characteristics:

• Larger-than-average floor area
• Open plan with few interior walls (the only walls were normally added during the conversion)
• High ceilings
• Retention and exposure of historic structural components, like brick walls and timber beams
• Occasionally exposed mezzanine areas, like “sleeping lofts,” which are interior partial floors that overlook the main floor

These became known as “loft apartments,” though usage of the term is vague and inconsistent. There are technically two types: a “hard loft” is one that was actually converted from another, non-residential space; while a “soft loft” is one that was built from scratch to look like it was converted.

Why I Looked It Up

In the show Fringe, a character said something like:

It’s a loft apartment, so there are no walls.

(They were transmitting some data, so this was important in terms of the plot.)

He said it like that was a known thing, which got me wondering whether there was an official definition. As mentioned, there’s no official definition, but what he said does fit the profile.