Organizational systems conceived for affordable housing are in a sense related to the same efficiencies required for profitable industrial production: Standardization, repetition, and scalability can all lead to both affordability and profitability. These same concepts are intrinsic to urbanized structure. Strict geometries, grids and modular massing are the building tools of urban planning.
The townhouse, the row-house and terraced housing are great examples of affordable housing theories fused with widespread building culture deployed toward inhabited city blocks. Spaces can be further densely packed from linear geometries common to cities into an intricate geometric weaving of public and private areas massed in a thick field referred to as mat building. In a compact interconnectedness dwellings or other functions are laid out within the quilt-like patchwork repeating the same composition clusters in a planar field one or two stories high. The term was first used by Alison Smithson in 1974. Architect and author, her article How to Recognise and Read Mat-Building described and analyzed the potential of this modern as well as vernacular architectural archetype.
The mat is a horizontal matrix where grid informs both units and structure. Steven Holl's Dense Pack Village proposition for Haiti experimented with the idea of an inclined mat-building using inclination as a site anchoring device. Imbedded in the existing topography and envisioned as a terraced landscape where each unit would receive equivalent light and spatial qualities, the mat formula is a decidedly democratic urban form; virtues outlined for one basic kernel are multiplied in a highly rationalized manner.
Developed in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquakes, the Dense Pack uses a diagonally divided square grid to fashion a mass / void relationship in its basic courtyard housing prototype. Each is then aligned, juxtaposed and multiplied to form an inclusive sheltering earthwork. The inclined plane is supported by a service space running parallel to each house. The square inhabitable earthwork optimizes solar shading, natural ventilation, thermal mass, and grey water recycling to reduce the building’s ecological footprint and to demonstrate a model of housing form harmonized with its sloping setting.
Mat-building Steven Holl's Dense Pack Village
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