German architecture firm Meyer-Grohbruegge has proposed a new residential typology that "adds a dynamic spatial dimension to a small building gap and emphasizes physical experience in housing". The competition-winning design features a central spiral staircase that connects the entire structure together and offers residents a fluid and dynamic interior that merges the outdoors and indoors.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
ADUs or accessory dwelling unit, a word mostly used by architects, is "a smaller, independent residential unit located on the same lot as a stand-alone single-family home" according to the American Planning Association. They can be converted spaces of existing houses, additions, or new stand-alone structures. In this piece, author Walter explores the recent policies in California that seek to reduce the shortage of housing.
All over the globe, countries are facing a housing crisis. United Nations statistics put the number of people who live in sub-standard housing at 1.6 billion, and 100 million of the world’s population are without a home. As conflicts and climate change forces refugees to move to new countries, and as housing prices around the world continue to rise, cities are having to grapple more and more with how to provide safe and affordable housing for their residents.
Only 18 months ago, everyone around the globe had their life upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost immediately, architects and designers began to speculate on how they could design for a better world that would be flexible, functional, and healthy. While the pandemic is far from over, with many scientific advancements and public health policies still needed to truly allow us to live out our “new normal”, perhaps its time to reflect on our predictions and examine what aspects of the pandemic were short-term reactions, and which aspects of life might be permanently reflected in how we think about the built environment.
The housing shortage has long been the catalyst for architectural speculation over adaptive resue scenarios or the valorisation of underused places in cities. At the same time, the health crisis and its work from home imperatives have brought into sharp focus the adaptive reuse potential of offices spaces into housing. The probability that some office buildings remain vacant post-pandemic opens up the possibility of bringing back housing to city centres, enabling the implementation of a 15-minute city vision. The following discusses the challenges and opportunities of transforming office spaces into housing, highlighting this limited phenomenon's long-term feasibility and impact.
Planning cities and the way that we comfortably live in them is often a pull between many things. From creating affordable housing for all, enhancing community facilities and amenities, and designing walkable neighborhoods, all aspects of urban design have trade-offs, or do they? While there are many reasons why cities are becoming increasingly more expensive, dense, and less pedestrian-friendly, one of the key drivers behind the increase in unaffordability has to do with the way that outdated zoning codes drive the lack of available housing that they regulate.
The urban metropolises of our planet are home to an abundance of stories. They are home to stories of wealth, of innovation, and of architectural marvels. They are home, too, to stories of inequality, inequity and of urban divides – places where one’s income determines the quality of the spatial environment around them. Within these stories has developed an increasing advocation for making cities “smarter”, the goal being to use data and digital technology to build more efficient and convenient urban environments.
Following the Second World War, United States veterans and citizens were seeking a fresh start, a rightful place to live out their modern American dream. With a significant housing shortage looming around and fast-growing families, solutions had to be found to provide equitable living means for all. The development of new construction techniques and propagation of easy building materials promised an age of prosperity.
The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the second list of 85 works competing for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Joining the batch of first nominations announced in February 2021, the full list comprises now of 532 competing works for the EU Mies Award 2022. The shortlist of 40 will be announced in January 2022, the winners in April 2022, and the Award ceremony will take place in May 2022.
San Francisco is a city defined by its relationship to housing. Since the 90s it has faced an affordable housing shortage, and now, has some of the highest rents of any major US city. As planners and policy makers work to move beyond the city's past and find new paths forward, architects and designers are testing out diverse housing models. From dense residential towers to multi-unit developments, modern housing aims to strike a balance between economy and urbanity.
The Hilda L. Solis Care First Village (HSCFV), a large-scale interim housing project providing a wide range of amenities for both the unhoused and those in transition, recently opened in Downtown Los Angeles.
Shopping malls and retail centers are dead- or so they say. Although much of how we shop was put on pause by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we experienced the surge in e-commerce focused purchases, some of your favorite stores are faced with reimagining themselves in a new way. As the pressure for high-density housing continues to rise, and big-box centers and shopping malls are left empty, is there a way that the place where you once purchased a new outfit could be transformed into your next apartment?
The average age of a home in Cuba is just over 75 years old, and three of them collapse every day. Cuba’s housing crisis is perhaps one of the most unique examples of urban inequity in the world. While the island nation’s extensive history of waves of foreign influence has largely shaped their government, and in turn their public policies and urban planning strategies, they yet have been able to stabilize their long-standing housing crisis- forcing thousands of Cubans to live in derelict homes or public shelters. Now, many questions are being raised about how they will build new housing, repair the existing structures, and revise laws that allow Cubans to have more autonomy in the homeownership process.
Housing is one of the core functions of architecture, circumscribing numerous typologies and encompassing a variety of issues. This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights different forms of housing submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From urban developments to micro homes, from a deep connection with the landscape to high-end technologies, this article explores the topic of residential architecture, presenting different approaches from around the world.
Featuring a strategy to refurbish the typical urban block of Barcelona to accommodate senior housing, a net-zero energy tower in Italy and a poetics-infused villa in Greece, the round-up spans a multitude of scales and housing scenarios. In addition, a concept for 3D printed micro-homes addresses the housing shortage, while an urban development in India recuperates the values of traditional villages. The following projects reveal various ideas surrounding residential architecture in its numerous forms.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
In this week's reprint, author Walter Jaegerhaus explores the U.S. housing challenge, drawing a timeline of the evolution of different architectural solutions, from around the world. Seeking to "inspire designers today to create new housing options", and hoping "that the U.S can again embrace its experimental origins and try out new ideas and methods", the article highlights examples from Europe and the Americas.
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MVRDV has revealed the design of "De Oosterlingen", a series of seven sustainable residential buildings on Amsterdam’s Oostenburg Island. The proposed buildings are distributed in a 'barcode' composition, forming an apparent unified design but with an animated skyline and unique characteristics such as varying roof shapes and façades of wood, glass, recycled brick, and bio-based composite.
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The viability of 3D Printing in architecture – has, at the very least – seen a seismic shift over the past few years. Usually relegated to prototypes or conceptual models, 3D Printed building designs are increasingly being actualised as physical projects. In 2013, WinSun, a Chinese company – was able to print 10 houses in a 24-hour period, becoming one of the first companies to achieve this feat using 3D Printing technology. More recently, in 2018, a family in France became the first in the world to live in a 3D Printed house. The city of Dubai is also seeking to have a quarter of its buildings be 3D Printed by 2025. These examples display the upwards category of this technology, and how it is very likely, as the years go by, this automation of building fabrication is even more integrated into the construction process than it is right now.
