The private villa set in a bucolic environment is a characteristic form of housing. Repeating this idealized model in large tracts gave shape to the garden city and suburbanization. The semi-detached house presents a different land allocation vision through pooling service distribution and sharing a demising wall. Applying this principle in a row of attached units gives us the basis of efficient, structured urbanity. Cities are ordered by unit juxtaposition (single or multi-unit) that fashion the ubiquitous streetscape of dwellings that condenses infrastructure for roads, services and other amenities.
The row house / workshop unit is perhaps the most symbolic representation of urban housing; A ground floor relates to street circulation for shops, commercial spaces, or owner-occupied workshops. Upper floors, the piani nobili for living spaces, elevate private spaces above street level. These levels could be owner-occupied or rented out as flats. Its adaptability to multiple tenure or rental scenarios makes terrace housing one of the more flexible urban strategies. Characterized by a formal front elevation that relates to the street, an informal rear elevation that relates to a backyard, aligned in a series, and positioned back-to-back, the arrangement conveys the typical city block.
Spanning party walls, façades can be customized with canopies or ornamental details that identify entrances. These are further personalized using materials, colors and geometries to achieve a dynamic composition from a basic configuration. From the iconic Alvaro Siza’s (SAAL) social housing project to Alejandro Aravena’s manifesto at Quinta Monroy, the repetition of this model also showcases the row housing’s potential to rationalize costs along with decisions about design and construction: systems, pieces, components can be mass produced.
Many lightweight prefabrication systems have been adapted to the row house as they deploy a structured platform of construction principles, repeating dimensions and serial organizations. Industrialized systems like the postwar British Weir Multicom system epitomizes the baseline components that make the pattern so cost effective: Wall panels for partitions, exterior walls, doors, and all other building elements are used by many aligned dwellings and structured by a rhythmical party wall arrangement.
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| The Weir Multicom System (from semi-detached to row houses) |
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