Suppose that each floor of a large warehouse, 120 feet wide by 160 feet long, is to be remodeled into 24 one-bedroom apartments of about 625 square feet each. Allowing for hallways, we could divide each floor into 25-foot-square apartments (gold diagram).  But a third of them will end up in the interior of the building with no windows. Can the apartments be long and narrow (blue diagram)?  Can they be 53 feet long so that they reach the hallway running down the middle of the building, but just 12 feet wide so that they take up as little of the precious exterior wall as possible?  This becomes more important if the warehouse is even longer than 160 feet. Here's what a 12-foot-wide apartment might look like. It's essentially a hallway between the interior door (at the top) and the exterior patio (at the bottom). On the left side are tables and shelves. On the right are the appliances including the bathroom, a bed which can be concealed by a curtain, and a seating area. There's little room for furniture other than the basics and the built-in storage. Although this arrangement would work, I must admit that personally I'd probably prefer to live in the 25-foot-square apartment.  Provided that I got one that had windows.