Download - Thesis book draft 2_120615
[Modular Density]A new paradigm for social housing through high density communal living.
Felipe Francisco M-arch 2015
0.0 [Abstract]
This thesis investigates the opportunities offered through
modular construction in the generation of low cost housing. The aim is
to create a new housing paradigm that, through hyper-density, achieves
a more economically viable, ecologically resilient, and culturally
constructive typology. This typology could be integrated within cities
with either high levels of poverty, or high housing cost, to offer a housing
opportunity for those unable to achieve the traditional idea of ownership,
and set precedent for a shift in housing culture towards a communal
rather than individual endeavor.
[Key Words] Density, Micro, Modular, Community, Affordability
Contents
Abstract | 0.0
2 Introduction | 1.011 Structure of the book | 1.1
3 Thesis statement | 1.2
5 Argument | 1.3
7 Relavance | 1.4
9 Personal statment | 1.5
14 Literature review | 2.016 Topic area | 2.1
18 Research essay | 2.2
24 Critera | 2.3
26 Precedents | 3.028 kitagata social housing | 3.1
30 Nakagin Capsule Tower | 3.2
32 Formosa 1140 | 3.3
34 Songpa Micro Housing | 3.4
36 Design research | 4.040 Criteria testing | 4.1
42 Frames | 4.2
56 Method | 4.3
62 Schedual | 4.4
64 Bibliography | 5.0
4
[Thesis Statment]
Proposing a new paradigm for affordable housing through the systematic reimagining of housing density, culture, and structure, to create a more efficient, resilient, and communal housing culture.
1.1
6
[Argument]
The rapid technology-fueled economic growth of society
and changing social dynamics has encouraged the outward expansion
of low-density suburban conditions. These changes have dispersed
populations over larger urban footprints, decreasing the density of
urban environments, resulting in a bloated condition of individual
space. This growth has outpaced the rise in personal income of the
majority of the population, making homeownership an unattainable
reality. By increasing housing density, and reimagining housing culture
to be a communal rather then individual endeavor, housing cost can be
drastically decreased and ownership made a reality.
1.2
On left aerial photo of landscape outside Miami by Paul and Anne Ehrlich
On opposite page, left photo of urban sprawl outside Houston by Christoph Gielen, right photo of urban sprawl by Kent Weakley
8
1.3 [Relevance]
The urban environment has always facilitated enormous
growth and development in all human endeavors acting as a generator
of intellectual, cultural, and economic progress. This progress is
exponentially related to the high levels of population density achieved
within metropolitan centers. Through a reciprocal relationship,
large urban populations push human progress and the promise of
opportunity attributed with progress draws in people to add to the
populace. The rise of the Industrial and technical revolutions have
catalyzed this growth pattern resulting in a drastic increase in global
progress and population.
Urban environments have scrambled to meet the needs of
these growing centers. Improvements in transportation technology
and infrastructure have allowed people to live farther from urban
centers and places of employment resulting in environmentally taxing
suburban sprawl. This growth has come at a cost both economically
and socially, the constant rise in population has lead to housing
sacristy driving up costs and forcing those of the lower strata of the
urban citizenry out of the housing market.
Beyond the moral implications of a society unable to house its
people there is a physical cost associated with supporting a portion of
the population without the means to compete within the current social
structure of urban environments. This thesis proposes to reimagine the
current housing paradigm and shift the future narrative of urbanization
towards a more inclusive and resilient path. By establishing precedent
for a more inclusive housing culture those of societies lower class can
be pulled back into a constructive role in the never ending human goal
for progress.
On left aerial photo of new York by Vincent Laforet
On opposite page, bottom aerial photo of Barcelona by Vincent Laforet,top tilt-shift photo of Los Angeles by Vincent Laforet
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1.4 [Personal Statement]
My interest in housing culture comes from the dualistic
nature of my upbringing. I was born, and spent the earliest years of my
life, in New Bedford Massachusetts; a city whose economic foundation
had crumbled long before I was born. At a young age I moved to the
small town of Marion Massachusetts, a wealthy community wherein
I was privileged with the safety and comfort of a middle-class,
suburban American. Due to this upbringing I have been witness to
boundless privilege, and crippling poverty. From a young age this
gave me awareness and benevolence for those who live without the
opportunities afforded to me. While these influences did not drive me
to the study of architecture, I have always carried them with me and
intend to leverage this thesis as a means of addressing these social
issues.
On left panorama of New Bedford harbor before a storm.
Above photo of Marion harbor.
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1.5 [Structure of the book]
In the sections that follow, this book will express the
influences and ideas pertaining to my thesis thinking. It will begin with
an examination of the literature and theories that have influenced
my thinking, the summation of which will form the criteria for testing
my design thinking along the way. Following this the book will cover
a brief collection of architectural precedents whose concepts and
architectonic details have played a role in the articulation of my design
thus far. With this background work completed, the book will cover the
bulk of my design thinking, starting with sketch criteria tests that will
inform design investigations into formal, spatial, economic, tectonic,
and social aspects of my thesis. The book will conclude with a graphic
amalgamation of my research methodology thus far and a timeline
covering the steps to come.
On left areal photo of New Delhi population density 30,000 per square mile
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2.1 [Topic Area]
Human history has been defined by the creation of the idea
of the urban environment. The recent technological revolution has
driven the rapid outward expansion of urban communities, spreading
them into peripheral “suburban” conditions which has changed the very
notion of urban through interconnecting populations like never before.
When taken as a conglomerate, urban environments offer enormous
opportunities due the population densities that they can support. Yet,
with the ever-expanding nature of the urban environment and urban
population arise a host of social, economic, ecological, and political
problems.
While the problems that plaque urbanism have always
existed, the evolution of society brought on by technology has amplified
these problems. As the infrastructure of urban centers becomes more
complex, so to do the issues. In the aim to address and call into question
some of the problems associated with the urban environment, I have
chosen to focus on housing. Housing as an architectural manifestation
within the urban context is the great facilitator that makes it possible for
a city to support such high densities of human life. As such, the problems
revolving around it are a microcosm of the problems faced by the entire
urban enterprise. The first major issue surrounding housing that I have
focused on are property costs, which have become unrealistic for many
members of the population to afford. The second is the bloated size of
“private” space taken by individuals, which has increased the reliance on
transportation and isolated individuals from the rest of the population.
And third, the ecological impact of the urban sprawl, the reliance on
fossil fuels and wasteful building/living practices associated with the
modern urban environment has had major environment ramifications.
My aim in studying the social, economic, and ecological problems
surrounding housing is to generate a paradigm that can act as a catalyst
for a new alternative urban narrative which moves away from its current
self-destructive path towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient
course.
On left aerial photo of new York by Vincent Laforet
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[Alternate urbanism] The urban environment is a condition that is constantly in a state of flux; it is a temporal condition unique to its place due to a variety of social, environmental, and historical influences. The concept of an urban environment has existed for thousands of years; always changing and adapting to the “now” 1 but over the past hundred years, the rate of change has rapidly grown. Catalyzed by the industrial and technical revolutions, the idea of urban today is drastically different from what it was only a century before. The rapid growth of urban environments has lead to constant scarcity in housing stock pushing urban growth further into the periphery of a city through a reciprocal relationship with the automobile which facilitates the ability for people to live further away from urban centers thus insuring its continued necessity. The rapid outward expansion has out paced the growth of cities and resulted in a lower-density “suburban” condition. In conjunction with technology-fueled growth came changing sets of public policy ranging from housing reform and city sanitation to more stringent, explicit zoning regulations that favor single-use urban zones. These changes have dispersed populations over a larger urban footprint, decreasing the density of urban environments and encouraging a bloated condition of individual space. The evolving condition of the urban environment has pulled away from the high density informal nature urbanism of the past moving that can still be seen cities such as Bangkok as seen in the image by Howard Davis, and brought major advances in the standard of living for the populace of cities but this growth has come with ramifications such as the proliferation of the automobile, urban sprawl, high-energy consumption, and the segregation of social systems. The shift into stringently defined boundaries between building types and the growth of low-density, larger scale commercial, residential, and business conditions has supported the ever-growing physical and economic gap between the rich and poor through separating residential and commercial areas of different economic classes. In urban environments with successful micro-economies, the result of the growing social gap has been the explosion of housing cost and high cost housing stock forcing those on the lower rungs of the social ladder out of urban centers and into the periphery. 2 Even through these social changes, populations in urban environments have continued to grow driving development, development that is often geared towards those of economic means, resulting in the lack of availability of housing stock throughout the urban environment from urban centers to the suburban periphery. The resulting housing shortage
has become a major component of the housing crisis of today’s urban environments. Conversely, in urban environments, in which the driving force behind its economic power has long dwindled, there is no shortage of housing stock. The lack of economic opportunity in declining urban environments pushes those of economic means out of these areas in the search for opportunity in suburban areas or other urban centers, leaving housing abandonment in their wake. The remaining populaces are those who are economically incapable of escaping these dwindling environments. 3 These ramifications of the modernization of urbanization have become apparent to policy makers and citizens alike. The backlash to these ramifications has been a shift in policies towards hybrid, more ambiguous, zoning conditions and urban interventions. These alternate ideas of urbanization offer methods and solutions for the social, economic, and ecological problems of urban environments. A singular discipline cannot take on the scale and scope of modern urbanization; only though a joint effort between disciplines can the problems be addressed and an alternative means of urbanization that redirects the urban narrative towards a more social and ecologically responsible condition be formed. This alternative path of urbanization must look to both the macro-scale of the urban environment and the micro-scale of built environment which house the populous that make up these urban centers. Jeffery Hou puts forward the idea of “now urbanism” in reference to the urgent need for action and intervention within urban environments today. For Hou, the cities of the future are the cities we live in today, grounded in the messy, yet idea-rich reality of the urban environments and the importance of the agency of the populous in catalyzing social change. The populations of an urban environment can make active changes to their environment even if on a small scale such as in the case of the Pitagoras school in Lima Peru. It is in the messy nature of deteriorating urban environments that solutions to current issues can be found.4 Brent D. Ryan lays out a means of dealing with the worsening conditions of declining or “shrinking” cities. The term shrinking cities is applied to cities that have been in decline due to the loss of their major economic driving force, leading to the loss of housing stock and citizens to abandonment and proliferation to the suburbs. Ryan proposes some strategic alternative methods of urban planning that can be applied in shrinking cities and stable cities alike such as palliative planning, which emphasizes intervening in areas, where housing abandonment and population loss are at their steepest, to slow the trend of housing loss. Interventionist
2.2
On left shophouses in Bangkok’s china town, show traditonal urban density. Howard Davis, 2012.
Research Essay
20
policy referring to polices for positive intervention through a balance of demolition of sectors that have become unstable and construction of new neighborhoods that support and encourage growth. As well as projective design, interventions within the urban context must look to project their impact into the cities future and not simply meet its existing needs. 5 These methods, in conjunction with a redistribution of public funding into strategic interventions as opposed to its general proliferation across the city, can lead to a condition of patchwork urbanism. A condition which accepts the inevitable loss of some part of the city and the irregular levels of density, habitation, housing stock, and public space within shrinking cities, and through curating where support is aimed, encourages economic and social growth of stable regions through targeted interventions in order to slow and stabilize the decline of a city. For both Ryan and Hou, addressing the macro-scale issues of urbanization means rethinking alternate methods of making todays cities through tactical interventions to catalyze meaningful changes . Looking to the macro-scale has the benefit of seeing the overall trajectory of the urban environment and helps to address larger social, economic, and ecologic issues but it has, and will always, fail to fully address the core focus of the physical environment and that is to facilitate human life. For this, we must look to the micro- scale of the built environment and its immediate effects on occupants of an urban environment. In their book Situational Norm the partners of LTL architects use the military term “SNAFU” (situational norm all fucked up) to highlight the issues with the current practice of architecture in its failure to address many of the social and environmental deficiencies it has helped to create, and instead propose an alternative set of tactics for addressing architectural practice starting with the user.6 LTL are not the first to propose such a change. The ideas have been brought up since the rise of modernism as a result of the social crisis faced during the early part of the 20th century. Karel Teige proposed a shift in the culture of architecture and housing in his ideas on the “minimal dwelling”. The goal of the minimum dwelling was not to make the smallest possible inhabitable space, but to strip away all of the cultural influences on space making, and look at the minimum biological requirements for healthy and productive living. These basic necessities, such as sun, light, and air, in conjunction with needs such as room to rest, eat, bathe, and sleep form the basis for a re-imagining of dwelling. In order to make it more affordable for those on societies lowest social strata, Teige wished to strip away waste and inefficiencies in housing. The poor could never be able to
afford the “bourgeois” idea of home that was embedded in the culture of society, but through radically redefining what home meant, the conditions of people living a subsistence minimum lifestyle could be improved. The means by which Teige proposes to create the minimum dwelling is three fold. First, through leveraging new technology to change the physical layout of space, such as light, movable partition walls to divide space, compact kitchens, and compact multi-functional furniture. Second, through changing the focus of architects to be more politically and socially oriented in order to serve and protect those of the proletariat, as well as through stripping away some of the amenities and serving spaces traditionally found in a dwelling and moving them to communal services that act as an extension of the apartment. Through relying on communal services, individual living cells can be made smaller and rented at a lower cost. It is through the shift from dwelling as an individual condition to a more collective and social condition that Teige proposed to solve the problems with housing.7 The idea of the minimum requirement for living is still being looked into in movements like micro- or “Nano” housing today to address current issues as suggested by Phyllis Richardson in Nano House which creates an argument for micro-housing as a means of moving away from the large scale economically and environmentally unsupportable housing seen today without giving up the major technological and design comforts that contemporary society has come to relay on.8 Alternatively, to mitigate the cost of housing prefabrication, which is getting a second look from authors such as Allison Arieff who, in Prefab, push for investments in prefabrication methods. While she accepts the long history of poor quality prefabricated housing, Arieff advocates investing in the process as a means of producing low-cost, high-quality housing much like other industrial production has done.9 These methods look to create social and cultural change on the urban scale through critical changes in the way in which individuals within the society live. Such a change in cultural and social conditions will inevitably have a portion of the population against the change; often the argument against ideas of communal housing are that such small housing, and lack of privacy, would be seen as less than ideal for the occupants. Shay Salomon would disagree, putting forward the argument that the focus on privacy in contemporary housing separates individuals from society, creating a feeling of isolation. Shay suggests a shift to smaller scale housing will encourage sharing and community and will help to nurture future generations into a less lonesome lifestyle.10 The micro-scale allows for the examination
2.2
On left parents and teachers work together to build terraced garden stairs at the Pitagoras school in Lima Peru. Jeffery Hou, 2015.
22
of the individuals relationship to the built form of an urban environment. The urban environment is made of both macro-level process and micro-level process connected through fabric buildings. These fabric buildings are a critical part of the urban environments mitigating the connections between the individual and the city, fabric buildings as put forward by Howard Davis are best described by the shop/house typology which under typical zoning laws had been largely ignored in modern urbanization. The shop/house is a hybrid building that combines dwelling and work in close relation to each other and the community. They exist in places where density allows for commercial activity acting as infrastructure that funnels people from residential areas to transportation and urban centers. Their condition as a residence and workplace allows them to integrate into a community through a connection between owner/resident and neighbors; their ties to communities generate a cyclical economic condition that supports the neighborhoods they are a part of. The success of these buildings is due to their cyclical flexibility, which is the ability for space to take on different functions at different times, whether daily weekly or otherwise. This allows the shop/house to function as a vital yet unassuming part of a community.11 Contemporary urbanism has vastly changed the way in which
people live their day-to-day lives. These changes to the urban environment have come with severe social, economic, and ecological consequences. Such consequences will have to be addressed today and by future generations through an interdisciplinary effort to change the way in which people live. Through changes made both on the macro-scale, focused on altering the urban condition through tactical intervention and planning, and on the micro-scale, through rethinking our cultural predisposition towards space, privacy, and consumption. The New alternative urban environment will take on drastically new forms as illustrated by Jeffery Hou in a proposal for an ecologically responsible future for the city of Seattle. The alternative path of urbanism to come from such changes will have to be more inclusive, communal, and responsible with the worlds limited resources.
2.2
On left rendering of Self regulating building as a proposal for a future ecologically responsible Seattle. Jeffery Hou, 2015.
[Endnotes]1) Hou,Jeffrey,ed.Now Urbanism: The Future City Is Here. Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork:Routledge.2015.
2) Davis,Howard.Living over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life.Abingdon,Oxon[England];NewYork,NY: Routledge.2012.
3) Ryan,BrentD.Design after Decline How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities.Philadelphia:Universityof PennsylvaniaPress,2012.
4) Hou,Jeffrey,ed.Now Urbanism
5) Davis,Howard.Living over the Store
6) Lewis,Paul,Tsurumaki,Marc,andDavidJ.Lewis.Situation Normal PamphletArchitecture21.NewYork: Princeton.ArchitecturalPress.1998.
7) Teige,Karel,andEricDluhosch.The Minimum Dwelling: The Housing Crisis,Housing Reform.Cambridge,Mass.: Chicago,Ill:MITPress;GrahamFoundationfor AdvancedStudiesintheFineArts.2002.
8) Richardson,Phyllis.Nano House: Innovations for Small Dwellings.London:Thames&Hudson,Inc.2011.
9) Arieff,Allison,andBryanBurkhart.Prefab. 1st ed.SaltLake City:GibbsSmith.2002.
10) Salomon,Shay,andNigelValdez.Little House on a Small Planet: Simple Homes, Cozy Retreats, and Energy EfficientPossibilities.Guilford,Conn:LyonsPress. 2006. 11)Davis,Howard.Living over the Store
24
2.3 5) The paradigm must achieve
spatial efficiency that address the
ecological problems associated
with housing.
Systems must be resilience to
ecological change.
Units must be fabricated in a
sustainable manner that minimizes
long term environmental impact.
Field must minimize the ecological
impact of the built mass through
location and land use.
4) The assembly and fabrication
methods utilized must achieve
maximum cost efficiency.
System must use minimal
material necessary to enclose
and support structure.
Units must arrogate with minimal
redundant space.
Field must be within close
proximity to material
transportation.
2) The housing paradigm must
achieve hyper-density while
allowing its occupants to thrive.
Building systems must
comprehensively contain
necessary communal program
with minimal redundancy.
Units must achieve maximum
acceptable level of human
density.
Field must fully utilize and activate
infill sites balancing building mass
and public space.
3) The building must be flexible
to the changing living conditions
of its occupants.
Systems must allow for occupants
to flexibly occupy communal
space as an extension their units.
Units must allow for short-term
changes to the living space as
well as large-scale long-term
changes.
Field must facilitate expansion
and contraction of occupancy
levels.
1) The building must be inclusive
of all social classes
Building systems must
encourage social interaction
across occupant types.
Unit quality must be consistent
across incomes.
Field must allow full range of
community interaction through
integration of public space.
6) Methods of representation
must allow for experimentation
and design feedback.
Models must allow for multiple
special ideas to be quickly tested.
Visualizations must amplify
atmospheric special conditions.
Drawings methods must allow for
rapid iterations of formal ideas.
Criteria
28
The unit aggregation
is based around the building
module with each unit being made
up of multiple modules, each
consisting of a specific program;
bedroom, living room, traditional
Japanese room, and terrace.
Different organizations of these
basics blocks led to a complex
building section, allowing some
units double height spaces as
well as lightening the buildings
facade through the layering of
punctured terrace spaces.
3.1 Kitagata Social Housing [SANAA Kazuyo Sejima+Ryue
Nishizawa]
Kiagata is the second phase of a social housing development that took into account occupant feed back in its design. Programmatically, the slender tower is entirely housing with exterior corridors on one side, giving each unit double exposure. To address the paradigm of Japanese social housing, which had not been changed since 1945, the building uses the unit as a base module, which could be aggregated. This modularity decreased construction waste, allowed for open terraces to puncture the buildings otherwise monolithic form, and facilitated the generation of complex unit sections. Modularity allowed Kiagata to work around its small budget and created a socially constructive, flexible housing system.
30
Nakagin Capsule Tower [Metabolism]
The Nakagin
Capsule tower offers a
unique glimpse of the
effects of time on a building
typology. The tower is the
result of a conglomerate
of architects working to
rethink housing in post-
war Japan. The towers
failures speak more than
its successes. The tower
contains 140 units of around
100 square feet, which,
while small, do not efficiently
use the available space.
The capsules that make up
the tower were meant to
have a lifespan of 25 years
before being replaced.
This was not followed
through, and unfortunately
the experimental building
techniques employed in
their constructions makes
maintenance difficult. While
in many respects the tower
was not successful, the
ideas it embodied are still
pertinent today.
Today 40% of the
buildings capsules serve
as office space. The rest
of the capsules are an
amalgamation of young,
transient, and old tenants.
While some of the tenants
appreciate the history of the
buildings, the majority have
voted to have the building
torn down to build a more
conventional building in its
place.
3.2
32
The buildings units are
interconnected through the soft
space of the atrium via shared
balconies whose minor role
allows for visual connection to
the exterior and interior, as well
as a major role in connecting
single units together to form
larger aggregate unit blocks,
allowing for a dynamic flexibility
of the living condition of the
occupant.
3.3 Songpa Micro Housing [SsD Architects]
Songpa avoids the
stark reality of the provisional
housing aspect of micro-
units through the creation of
“tapioca space” as a socially
constructive framework
for the building. This
ambiguous space between
units acts as a semi-public
extension of the apartments,
creating balconies, visual
connections, and semi-
private circulation. The
[semi]-private aspect
allows for the flexibility of
the units programmatically
acting both as private
residence and public gallery.
Additionally, the below
grade, micro-auditorium
serves as a public gallery
and private common
space. The ambiguous,
soft space of the building
acts as a social condenser,
connecting the private
internal residence space to
the external public realm.
34
Formosa 1140 [LOHA Architect]
Formosa provides
a unique example of the
utilization of private land for
public space. The 11 units of
the building are justified to
one side of the lot, allowing
a third of the site to act as a
public plaza. This park space
acts as both public plaza
and the buildings common
space, allowing every unit
a park view. The larger
purpose behind this gesture
was to set a precedent for
a new typology of urban
park. If proliferated through
the city, this typology
could offer new means of
connection and mobility for
the populace through linking
the existing series of pocket
parks into an urban network.
Through a dynamic
façade, the building creates a
buffer zone between the urban
park space and the private
residence. This is done through
pulling the metal panel skin off
the façade, creating an exterior
circulation zone for the units,
while still concealing more
private sections of the building.
Additionally, the panel system
acts as a solar shade to help
passively cool the residence
within.
3.4
38
Criteria Testing
[Criteria test 1]
Through
minimizing the size of
privately owned space within
the building system the cost
associated with housing can
be reduced in order to make
ownership a possibility for
those who cannot afford
traditional housing.
[Criteria test 2]
By testing housing
density to its most extreme
levels, the amount of space
and systems necessary to
facilitate habitation by an
individual can be examined
and used as a base point for
module development.
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40
[Criteria test 3]
Allowing for both
linear and cyclical flexibility
within the modules the long
and short term needs of
occupants can be addressed
without redundant,
underutilized space.
[Criteria test 4]
Comparing the
construction cost and square
footage of a module to the
long term environmental
impact of the materials and
fabrication methods used
allows the cost to volume of
the modules to be balanced
with their environmental
impact.
4.1
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42
Framing the Investigation
[Cost Analysis]
Based on census
data, the cost of new
construction for single and
multi-family homes is six
to twelve times the same
construction cost for 350
square feet of living space.
[Unit Organization]
As unit sizes get
smaller, they loose their
autonomy due to the need
to move some amentias
out of the unit. This can be
mitigated through organizing
singular units into larger
blocks. Communal space,
both internal and external,
can be introduced to house
services and relieve pressure
from the housing density.
4.2
44
[User Organization]
In consideration
of differing user groups,
the base unit can act as
an expandable module,
allowing for changes
in the living conditions
of occupants over time
and helping to maintain
space efficiency as well
as encourage long-term
occupancy.
[Social Growth]
To minimize
upfront construction cost,
and foster local interest,
major systems can be
constructed without building
the modules, allowing
the building to grow as
occupants move in and the
community housed within it
expands.
4.2
46
[Module Layout]
The base module
is designed around a single
occupant. Inorder to allow
for shipping, the module is
constrained to a maximum
of 144 square feet. To
fully activate this volume,
compact multinational
furnishings and lofted
spaces are implemented. As
occupants living conditions
change, such as in the event
of a growing family, disability,
or age, additional modules
can be added to expand the
living space.
4.2 288 SQFT V2144 SQFT
48
[As expressed in this series
of models integrating digital
and physical fabrication
methods within interactive
exploratory models
has allowed for spatial,
structural, and conceptual
ideas to be tested rapidly.]
4.2
50
[Construction]
Modules can be
prefabricated off-site to
reduce cost and integrated
into the structure over time,
through designing the
modules structure with their
aggregation in mind the
space required in-between
units for support could be
minimalized.
4.2 CUBE CONSTRUCTION 288 SQFT V1
52
[Sighting]
In order to amplify
the social impact of this
new housing paradigm,
the system can be fielded
within underused spaces in
struggling cities. Through
siting systems in close
proximity to existing and
proposed transportation
infrastructure, occupants
can work far from their
residences without reliance
on personal transportation
and encourage migrants.
These struggling
communities to facilitate
local economic growth.
4.2 BATTLESHIP COVE MONTELLO
54
[On left a series of massing
studies along existing and
proposed commute rail lines
in mass gateway cities.]
4.2 KINGS HIGHWAY WHALES TOOTH
56
Methodology
In working through
my thinking, my method
has consisted of dynamic
physical modeling which
has allowed for spatial aides
to be quickly tested, digital
modeling the precision of
which has prompted the
development of ideas and
both diagrammatic and
atmospheric illustrations to
clearly articulate my thinking.
4.3
62
Timeline
My process
moving forward will be
focused explorations of my
thesis ideas through the
lenses of module, systems,
and field. By overlapping
the focus periods of these
lenses, a feed back loop
can be formed where
thinking in one area can
inform the other. In the final
development of the thesis
the three sections will be
integrated into a singular
formal idea.
4.4
Proposal development
Site development Module development
systems development
field development Final development
Complete Thesis
Pick test bed site for proposal
12-2
0-1
5
Complete site documentation
01-
02-
16
Configure massing to site forces
01-
20-1
6
Begin developing module.
Begin developing systems
01-
27-1
6
Begin developing field
02-
08
-16
02-
02-
16
Complete developing module
Complete developing systems
02-
16-1
6
Complete developing field
03-
27-1
6
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