Relating the advantages of the single-family dwelling (privacy, spatial distribution on multiple floors, four orientations for views and exterior spaces) with the benefits of collective housing (density, shared services, proximity) has inspired architects since industrialization created an magnifying need for affordable urban housing prototypes. The last few blog posts have referenced Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation based on amassing rationalized two-floor flats, Metabolists’ plugins aggregated over shared towers along with an idealized view of a multi-floor infrastructure to accommodate homes represented in Site Architect’s Highrise of Homes (1981).
The flagship endeavor for this productive vision of high-rise suburban living is Habitat 67 constructed for the Man and his World exhibit in Montréal, Canada (1967). The modular prestressed and post-tensioned concrete mega-blocks were cast and amassed to create an architectural statement about the potential future of housing that never manifested. Still this architectural dream endures in its most at once naive and foreword looking manifestoes.
Chicago studio Kwong Von Glinow projected a tower of multi-story houses for Hong Kong. The design won first prize for the Hong Kong Pixel Homes competition in 2018. The modular boxes would be stacked up to four high to organize single houses and apartments vertically instead of the horizontal relationships conveyed in conventional planning. Juxtaposed single, couple and family units are intended as a type of vertical unit – a neighborhood - activating dynamic collective spaces between units. The interiors could be fit-out according to inhabitants’ needs and eventually evolve over time. While the theoretical proposal is rendered to showcase a mass to void relationship that allows for vertical patios, views and rich interior/exterior relationships, the real-life viability remains to be proven. Designed in groups of four stories, the proposal echoes the need for a type of primary support structure to carry each stacked neighborhood, which would allow for streamlined replication of modular units. As developed in a timber tall building in Norway, Treet, the four-story stack built on a infrastructure floor is a credible option for realizing this contemporary take on the vertical distribution of individualized dwellings.
left: Pixel competition design ; right: Treet section showing two «support» floors
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