The coolest elevator I’ve seen

Elevator in Mumbai office building

This was amazing! I loved that the elevator proudly displayed both a “0 floor” for the ground AND a “-1 floor” for the subterranean parking garage.

This kind of logic is not widespread in buildings. A few strange examples are explained in Wikipedia’s entry for building story’s. The gist is that most floor numbering systems seem to suffer from superstition (no 13th floor), innumeracy (mezzanine level), or inconsistency (a building on a hill may have  two “ground” floors).

I applaud these architects and hope this is a genuine sign that math literacy is improving.

Have you seen other interesting floor numbering systems? Write your story in the comments or send a pic to me and I’ll be happy to post it.



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  • shipoopi

    Eum, I think this is quite standard in most European countries. I don’t really see why this is so amazing.

  • Dan

    story’s is possessive
    stories is plural

    Don’t mean to look for faults – I appreciate the work in this website.

  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    I was just in India…didn’t see this on any elevators.
    But that’s quite amusing to see that you’re going to a negative floor :-)

  • E

    This is the norm in Israel. I’m pretty sure that all of Europe considers “first floor” and “ground floor” to be different, too.

  • roundsquare

    Every elevator I’ve seen in India has this, including at my office.

  • Satish

    Being from India and currently living in Europe, I can safely say it’s a common story every where I have been too :) i.e 13th floor are marked as 13, Ground floor are marked as 0 or G and sub-subterranean are marked as -ve numbers. Unfortunately some of the popular hotels seem to buck this trend and mess up the survey numbers :)

  • knaj

    i have seen this before

  • http://www.vpsgraphics.com V Paul Smith Jr

    Every elevator I’ve seen in Europe is that way. And people there that I talked to about it, say that it is the norm. So that widens the sample to more than jest what I’ve seen myself.

    I actually don’t like it and think it’s a silly idea. A one story building would consider itself a 1 story building, but would (theoretically) number that floor with a 0. That’s stupid. Why not use Counting Numbers and start counting with 1, which it what it is.

    If the point was to measure your elevation (in Floor Unit) from the actual ground floor, and then round down, then sure, whatever. But the Floors should be treated as complete objects, and counted as such.
    You shouldn’t treat mistaken novelty for a “genuine sign that math literacy is improving.” I feel it’s nothing of the sort.

    Also, if you have a photo album of the 1st year of a child’s life, and were to label it, you wouldn’t say that it is: Year 0. No, it’s Year 1, etc.





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