Dense, mobile, adaptable, affordable and efficiently produced dwellings are the foundation of a sustainable future as earth’s population expands and urbanizes at a exponential rate estimated to reach 8 billion people in 2020; 55% percent presently live in cities and this figure will grow to 70% by 2050. Stacking and building vertically to reduce strain on infrastructure and land development has been one of the most promoted strategies for converging architecture and urbanism with industrialization. Japanese metabolist visions epitomized the idea of an adaptable and changing city based on mass-produced capsules, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nagakin tower being the flagship project. 20th century experiments also include equally radical, visually eccentric, marginal or far-fetched proposals for vertical living.
A pioneer of mobile home production, Elmer Frey envisioned his factory built mobile homes as ready-made components, stationed in vertical reinforced concrete structures. Founder of Rollohome, a successful mobile home manufacturer which generated tens of thousands of homes in the early 1950s, Frey introduced his multi-unit concept as The Sky Rise Terrace. An urban system organized by two 110-meter towers packed with 504 variable ten-wides (3m wide mobile home). The vertically sprawling trailer park included parking spaces for each unit. The ground floors would house shops and restaurants. Owners could drive up to their units along peripheral circulation. Tested on a smaller three- storey version built in Saint-Paul Minnesota in 1972, the concept was plagued by technical issues. A similar idea, known as the Townland system, was explored during Operation Breakthrough by Boeing, which also looked to combine adaptable individualized units within a shared concrete framework. Although imagined and promoted as part of a greater ideal of adaptability the stacked units offered very little real flexibility as their integrated factory production hampered future changes.
Almost half a century later, vertical systems based on mass produced units continue to be proposed as efficient dwelling strategies, but this time within social demographic dynamics that argue for their main stream use. Within this context start-ups like Kasita, a micro-unit producer, proposed their smartly designed dwellings stacked into an image of a changing urban framework again imagining the city as a mega space-frame hub for moveable dwellings.
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| Skyrise Terrace model ; Tested version in Saint-Paul Minnesota ; Kasita's urban proposal |
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