Adapting vacant, underused, neglected commercial buildings to respond to the affordable housing crisis can potentially be to today’s procurement challenges what the mobile home and cheap prefabs were to interwar and postwar 20th century housing production. Intensifying use of deserted central neighborhoods also leads to less sprawl revaluing derelict spaces. Many have suggested that adapting existing buildings to new functions is complex and costly, even arguing that new construction is cheaper. Considering its complicated logistics redeploying existing infrastructure offers environmental benefits by reducing, reusing and recycling components and materials.
Implanting systems for private kitchens and baths can certainly be expensive and structurally complex as most commercial building floor plates were not designed to service multiple flat layouts. Imaginative co-living patterns provide opportunities for sharing services; appartements can offer autonomous private spaces with wet core services placed to be shared among many occupants, reducing mechanical distributions. This type of micro-unit community was projected by London firm SHED. The tiny units can easily be slipped into any building. The no frills living standards offer a safe and private place to live, sleep and work. They also help revive buildings that otherwise would slip further into disrepair.
Tim Lowe, an architect from Studio Bark, the founder of the SHED project sees their approach as a win-win low rent strategy. Conceptually, the integrated furniture units are a type of Ikea kit framed within a streamlined supply chain; The modular volumes’ components can be produced serially to efficiently distribute low-cost micro-dwellings. All elements including wall panels are designed to be assembled or even disassembled using a mallet and a screwdriver in a day. Insulated for acoustic and thermal comfort, interiors would include a small space for working along with a closed area for sleeping. All other dwelling requirements are shared.
In a typical central core office layout, the central core could be adapted to include common kitchen and baths using the existing vertical ducts with the living pods being distributed freely on the open floor plate. While admittedly not a total solution to solve housing shortages reusing existing infrastructure does substantially diminish massive material extraction required by new edifices.
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| Moveable unit in an existing building |
