DESIGN APPROACH

The starting point of the design was not from the site but from understanding the need to tackle the problems of individual rowhouses. The parti was then generated in search of answers to these problems. Here the idea was to create 5-meter x 5-meter square grids that were wide enough to accommodate different kinds of living spaces and introduce a courtyard instead of grouping rowhouses together. This approach led to the stacking of the houses in an interlocking manner and provided different permutations for planning the houses. The other important consideration was to arrange the prime nodes (circulation and core) in such a way that the movement of the body within the space was not limited to a fixed direction.

These ideas led to designing a 20-meter x 15-meter building module that could be either attached linearly or mirrored and then attached to develop varieties of floor plans. The houses have open living rooms, 1-3 bedrooms, bathrooms, sunroom, balconies, terraces, roof decks, porches, etc., depending upon the types of modules. While planning the houses, some of the units on the ground floor level were designed in compliance with ADA, which ensured the inclusion of special population as one of the user groups. In addition to that different strategies were applied while planning for the site to get interesting open spaces and create better living environement which was felt necessary in the new normal after the pandemic.

Row houses are very practical for high-density development. However, they are not desirable to many user groups because of the existing problems in the design of typical row houses. For rowhouses to be desirable in the context of Salt Lake City, where Single-family houses and Apartments are the only options, the row houses need to evolve and become much more than just a rowhouse. It has to have the flexibility to provide variations, tackle lighting and ventilation problems, negate limited spatial experience, and provide healthy living conditions for the users. The design proposal manifests the different ideas, approaches, and solutions brought to the table to reconceptualize rowhouses as a resilient and promising typology to achieve high-density development in Salt Lake City.