Thecityver sushousi ngagain
azrieli school of architecture and urbanism, carleton university, ottawa, canada arcs 4105a – bas-design, 4th-year comprehensive studio Studio Final Review, Friday, 16 December 2011, 11:00am-6:00pm Guest critics: Serge Belet, Architect; Senoir Project Manager, National Gallery of Canada Morgan Carter, L’OEUF, Montreal Alessandra Cianchetta, Azrieli Visiting Professor, Carleton University; AWP Office for Territorial Reconfiguration, Paris Janine Debanné, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism Lucie Fontein, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism; University of Cincinnati School of Architecture Federica Goffi, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism Lorenzo Imbesi, School of Industrial Design, Carelton University Jay Lim, Stantec, Ottawa; Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism H. Taj Masud, Architect, Ottawa-New Delhi; Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism Alexis Sornin, Head, Study Centre, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal Students: Shelby Brisbin & Sarah Sako Vanessa Haddock & Sarah McMurty Ann Le & Elise Phillips Toffazzal Hussein Patwary Chelsea Chan & Kristina Strecker Kristen Van Haeren Javed Khan Megan Beange & Daniel Nedecki Aisha Sawatsky & Ushma Thakrar Instructor: Inderbir Singh Riar
Thecityver sushousi ngagain
“...it is not that the solution of the housing question simultaneously solves the social question, but that only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible.” Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question (1872) “Everything is there when you’re living in the city” Funkadelic, “Let’s Take it to the People” (1976)
This studio aimed to reimagine the norms and forms of urban housing. The design of multi-family housing is perhaps the most challenging issue in contemporary architecture. It is subject not only to specific site conditions and programmes, but to political will, economic constraint, and social concern. Moreover, housing must be considered in a broader framework: the status of the individual within the collective, the relationship between a private domain and public sphere, and the expression of daily ritual alongside the dynamics of the civic realm. The ambition was to advance buildings (very big buildings) capable of resituating these kinds of space relations. Resulting works sought the typological reinvention of received ideas on housing. As such, the desire for a new cultural programme – an enclave of possibility – was based on recognising that projects must operate at the critical mass of the city itself. This was, in the end, nothing short of a call for avant-gardism. Housing was thus to be seen in its properly utopian vocation – that is, to take exception to Friedrich Engels’s penetrating insight and instead to achieve architectures aimed at the renewal of public space, civil discourse, and everyday life. Ottawa, the site of the studio, is among a number of growing “mid-size” cities in Canada. Having merged its expanding suburbs, its agglomeration
is approaching one million people. A push towards developer-driven housing is resulting in the “condo-isation” of the city – on one hand, indicating the pressing need to densify the downtown core; on the other hand, reflecting ad hoc attitudes toward urban design, with little regard for lasting civic or cultural value. The studio took exception to this broad trend. Students began by investigating key housing precedents. Working in pairs, they explored – through combinations of diagrams, drawings, and models – the effects of programme, structure, and space planning in each case study, typically a work of “heroic” moderism, as well as its discursive context. By the end of this phase, which lasted three weeks, students were to evolve a theory of type as the intellectual and formal framework towards a design project. Learning from precedent analyses, students elaborated a dialectic between building parti and unit design as a social force. This was the critical ambition of the studio. Comprehensive site strategies, both in terms of the internal dynamics of an ensemble and its greater relations to the city at large, were essential. Final projects attempted to advance new forms of cultural association – what might in unkinder terms be termed “social engineering” was here to be considered favourably as a way to imagine future forms of living.
16.12.11finals
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Shelby Brisbin and Sarah Sako
222+ In a singularly long building are found new means of accommodating occupants and offering at once social and cultural amenities to surrounding neighbourhoods. A 500-metre housing bar holds the eastern edge of the Market district along the busy thoroughfare of King Edward Avenue. Mostly raised on pilotis, the building maintains links between the city and parkland along the Rideau River. 222 one- to four-bedroom units are grouped in clusters to create semi-private areas between neighbours. These in-between spaces rest behind the continuous building façade, resulting in interstitial spaces of shared “front yards” and “backyards”. A detailed study of surrounding context informed the provision of public programmes: library, daycare, full-length swimming pool, rock climbing wall, and a roof garden running the length of the housing block. The building functions by gradients of public and private space, maintaining the inner realm of the residents (social space arranged from unit to cluster) while opening up to daily use by outsiders.
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Guest critics: Janine DebannĂŠ, Alexis Sornin, Serge Belet, Lucie Fontein (hidden), Federica Goffi, and Alessandra Cianchetta
Vanessa Haddock and Sarah McMurty
[Un]CityCentre [Un]CityCentre is located at the corner of City Centre Avenue and Somerset Street at the western edge of downtown Ottawa. The surrounding fabric comprises singlefamily houses as well as commercial and light industrial uses. Immediately north is the empty scape of the LeBreton Flats. [Un]CityCentre integrates this dense context into a singularly large 25-storey building. Each floor offers multitude housing types designed for four kinds of residents: bachelor, couple, family, and empty-nester. Housing is arranged in quasi-courtyard layouts, thus forming pockets that, taken together, create a greater neighbourhood. A more expansive sense of community is achieved through a “free section”: walkways and ramps connect different levels, and oblique views through the building help to link different neighbourhoods across multiple levels. As a mass – whether mass public or massive building – [Un]CityCentre posits a uniquely new and large housing typology in Ottawa, while serving as an urban “edge” and thus gateway to the city.
Floor plates with “neighbourhoods”
Unit types
Elise Phillips and Ann Le
Grids This housing complex will arise over a number of years. Housing is thus understood as a process. The site, Porter Island, in the middle of the Rideau River and between the Market and New Edinburgh neighbourhoods, has an existing retirement home surrounded by an undeveloped landscape. The aim is twofold: to densify Porter Island while guarding its open space, and to bring a more diverse population as means for enriching the everyday life of the elderly. A grid system is placed on the site, each square a possible unit. Multiplied, unit combinations give rise to a greater urban form. Existing infrastructure is omitted from the grid, thus allowing the project to “grow� by adapting to the site. Prefabrication and the use of standardised elements add flexibility, with occupants able to expand their units. Over time, the invisible grid transforms into a community.
Porter Island, a place for fishing and visiting Grandma
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Guest critics: H. Masud Taj, Lorenzo Imbesi, Morgan Carter, Janine DebannĂŠ, Serge Belet, Alexis Sornin, Alessandra Cianchetta, and Federica Goffi
Toffazzal Hussein Patwary
PHIL
Technotopia Technotopia offers an industrialised building system to deal with the pressing needs for housing growing urban populations and to reimagine corresponding spaces of social life. A kit of parts enables the quick vertical growth of residential, commercial, and public space. Easily delivered and readily assembled – with work performed by “dry” trades – the system can be customised and expanded to reflect the changing needs and tastes of its users. An open structural web holds residential trays with individualised living modules made of prefabricated and reconfigurable panels. Bridged plug-in components lead to service levels where public programmes – retail, offices, and restaurants, among others – float openly. The emphasis on flexibility is aimed at overcoming obsolescence. Technotopia is future-ready, with density conquering sprawl.
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Chelsea Chan and Kristina Strecker
Fabricated Landscapes This project reclaims the last privately held land along the Hull, Quebec, waterfront and opens it to the public. In response to the existing topography, with its dramatic rocky outcrops, and the celebrated view of Ottawa, with its parliamentary backdrop, a fabricated landscape unites a system of existing riverfront parks and extends the city with new housing and cultural programmes. Three different housing complexes – with 1-bedroom/bachelor units, two-storey maisonettes, and “live-work” artist lofts – run along the site. Multilevel pathways connect the housing bars to cultural and recreational spaces, offering a new civic datum to both Hull and Ottawa.
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River view northward to Hull, Quebec
Longitudinal section
Maisonettes, West building
Live/work units, Central building
1- and 2-bedroom units, East building
Fabricated landscapes
Guest critics: Jay Lim, Serge Belet, Alessandra Cianchetta, and H. Masud Taj (hidden)
Kristen Van Haeren
The Un-ideal City Philemon Island, located in the Ottawa River, offers a tabula rasa for an experimental housing project open to “growth and change”. Thirteen unique housing clusters, each consisting of twelve unit types and not exceeding three storeys, are linked by multiple pedestrian paths extending to surrounding public, commercial, and civic spaces. A diversity of experiences is made possible while the “local” aspects of daily life are maintained within the clusters. Car traffic and parking are entirely underground thus allowing unfettered pedestrian movement. The result: an Un-ideal City – not a completely randomised world, but an urban realm in which labyrinthine forms allow ever-changing social and spatial actions extending from doorstep to street to neighbourhood to island community.
Housing Clusters
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Towards the Un-Ideal City: pathsways
Towards the Un-Ideal City: housing clusters
Towards the Un-Ideal City: public/commercial clusters
Clustering as a 24-7-365 preoccupation
Javed Khan
Demograph Bar Multiple unit types, designated communal areas, and green spaces, are combined in a continuous housing “bar” to accommodate the demographic needs of Ottawa. Set at the corner of King Edward Avenue and Boteler Street, an “urban wall” demarcates the undeveloped northern edge of the Market District. The project follows the still resonant modernist dream to synthesise living and communal life within the ambit of a singularly large structure. The emphasis on social programmes, interspersed on multiple levels amongst 88 units, aims at attracting and uniting a variety of residents by offering spaces of gathering without removing the ideals of privacy.
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Megan Beange and Daniel Nedecki
AcreCity How to create a sizeable community, even a small city, in a building? The demand for mass housing presupposes such a question. This project advances a complex comprising six levels, each large enough to support a multitude of six-storey apartment buildings made of six interlocking unique unit types. The variety of units corresponds to different groups, whether of families and individuals, yuppies or the elderly. The “floors”, which actually support apartment buildings, are in effect six different neighbourhoods. Continuous perimeter glazing, linking the inside edges of apartment blocks, creates a naturally-lit conditioned space for year-round public use. All apartments face outward with units exposed to fresh air and light. The building parti is shaped by the sun’s annual trajectory: a solar path that “cuts away” the overall mass helps to capture sunlight for all units. The careful calibration of natural light and the attention paid to fostering community are, together, means to achieve at once a large-scale housing complex and to make high-density living both humane and comfortable.
Six-storey tower clusters and unit types Loft style – One-bedroom
Flats/lofts – One-bedroom
Silos – One-bedroom
Single-family homes – 2-plus bedrooms
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Building levels: each floor tray supports multiple 6-storey apartment blocks, thus acting as a neighbourhood in itself
Solar paths as massing strategy
Structural diagram: cumulative stepped walls of six-storey housing blocks
Ushma Thakrar and Aisha Sawatsky
Sixty-five: Over/Under Hello. Have you ever lived in a suburb? Tell us about your house there. What did you do in your spare time? Do you still use your car? Where do you go? Do you know your neighbours? What is your sense of community here? Survey of the residents at Rockcliffe Retirement Centre, Porter Island, Ottawa Sixty-five: Over/Under reconsiders retirement living. Its site is Porter Island, Ottawa, host to two retirement homes. The island reflects qualities that draw people to the suburbs: an abundance of space and a connection to nature (read: greenery and fresh air). These conditions are, however, underdeveloped, and Porter Island does little to foster social contact outside the existing buildings. Sixty-five: Over/Under introduces a series of staggered podia enclosing the existing retirement homes while supporting tiered single-family housing linked by new circulation paths (greenswards and roads). Underneath the housing are multi-levels of public programme. The raised infrastructure aids densification while maintaining that aspect of life most privileged by the residents: a place for interaction and leisure. The individualised attributes of suburban life – direct car access, larger dwellings, private space (indoor and outdoor) – are negotiated by a desired communal life presupposed by a retirement “community”.
ROADS AS TRANSFER BEAMS
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Multi-levels supporting single-family residences and recreational programmes
Precedent: North American suburbia
Permutation No. 1: “backyard” condition replaces garden with street frontage
Permutation No. 2: combined “front yard” and “backyard” conditions
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Housing v. the City If anything, then the ongoing global financial crisis has put housing, thus architecture, at the centre of political debate and public life. Despite the abstractions of credit default swaps, the fundamental commodity, parsed and trafficked by Wall Street, remains a very real need and thing: a home. Canadians have remained largely free of the subprime phenomenon. This owes to a combination of government regulation and a tax code that, for better or worse, does little to promote home ownership to the degree privileged in the United States, Canada’s largest trading partner. Yet it is in its cultural effect that a housing bubble (whether in the United States or, today, Spain, if not elsewhere – including, possibly, Canada), as root of worldwide economic uncertainty, gives further pause. This is especially pressing for architectural pedagogy – and certainly in a design studio dedicated specifically to urban housing. As such, one faces a fundamental question: what, in the end, is the role, if not status, of housing as public discourse and private need? This studio, Housing v. the City, sought to address the question. At stake is reviving a modernist imaginary in which housing was a vehicle of spatial and social experiment, the primary mode for resituating the norms and forms of urban life. If the lessons of the Modern Movement lie in its replacements to the insalubrious nineteenth-century city, then
how to imagine a similarly pressing programme in early-twenty-firstcentury developed Western cities? Taking a global view, one is simply reminded that, for the first time in history, over half the world’s population is now urbanised, with the corresponding rise of so-called “mega-cities”. Yet the site of the studio, Ottawa, Canada, a national and G7 capital, is hardly a mega-city. (Its population is 900,000, a figure forced upward by counting distant suburbs). Nevertheless, as a so-called “mid-size city”, the emblematic Canadian type, it shares a host of concerns with much larger metropolises, including demands for providing infrastructure, transportation, accessible government, and, indeed, adequate (read: affordable) housing. It is in the last that the Canadian mid-size city faces a crucial test. On the one hand, the ongoing expansion of suburbs is newly altering the political landscape. In the next few years, electoral redistricting, with its attendant spatial effects, will tend toward new parliamentary seats in ex-urban areas (outside Toronto and Calgary), where more conservative voters are expected to reside. On the other hand, the currently robust Canadian economy continues to fuel the “condo-isation” of its cities, including Ottawa. Investors and speculators, priced out of Vancouver and Toronto, are bringing capital to bear on new markets. While this has, perhaps, allowed a welcome means to densify Ottawa, particularly with infill projects, a much broader cultural project remains unaddressed: just
The condo-isation of Ottawa
how does housing function as a public good? The ongoing capitulation of public agencies to private interests, played out since at least the early1970s, has withered the mandate of modern architecture – that is, to use housing as a site of socio-technical experiment, thus making it an agent of cultural, even political, change. In the American context, the New Urbanist concept of “defensible space� and the consequent Hope IV legislation have contributed to the large-scale demolition of social housing stock throughout the country (with replacement by designs aesthetically and socially geared to the single-family home). The neoliberal urban policy is best manifested by development initiatives favouring PPP (public-private partnership), a concept popular in Canada and further evidence of the eroding superior credit of the state. Despite neo-modern styling, it is difficult to see how condominium towers and hamlets around Ottawa are fostering novel forms of human association, however modest in scope. This may be too much to ask from developer-driven housing; it is not, however, a tall order for an architecture studio. The student projects presented here aimed to re-position the social within the ambit of dwelling. This was not simply to design affordable housing as do-goodism; rather, it was to demand how housing, as a work necessarily emerging from economies of scale, can resituate space relations in the city. A consequent emphasis on programme allowed students to experiment with spaces of acculturalisation, thereby seeing housing as greater than its private
Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block (London: Harvill Press, 1953): “Sketch by a young architect in the office (Brachm) about 1933 demonstrating the ‘Vertical Garden City’: instead of the town sprawling over the country, the country is let into the town”
domain (and means of financing). As such, the ambition to project largescale works was to reclaim, however partially, the hopes of the “social condenser”, a concept first articulated by the Russian Constructivists and central to the modernist avant-gardes, where sufficiently massive buildings could engender new ideals of living and everyday life. Pre-war experiments, including the works of Le Corbusier, culminating notably in his Unité d’Habitation (Marseilles, 1952), became powerful sources of agency for the students. The attempt was, therefore, to extend from the unit to the building to the territory, and to see the individual and the collective as inextricably linked. Housing became as much a way to spur alternate kinds of community as it did to redefine the city (and, at times, its underdeveloped peripheries). Students undertook significant structural and material experiment, evolving projects in which advanced technics were crucial to the realisation of radically new ways of living. The works in this booklet offer an accounting of housing in the city. To take the “versus” of the studio title, these projects, and their young designers, mount a challenge to the contemporary city, demanding reconsideration of the “public” in public space, the “civic” in civic life, and the “house” in housing. In this shared desire, it is hoped that the most prophetic dreams of the modernist imaginary are reawakened.
Š2012 azrieli school of architecture and urbanism, carleton university, ottawa, canada arcs 4105a – bas-design, 4th-year comprehensive studio, fall 2011 publication Editor: Inderbir Singh Riar Permission has been granted to include photographs of students. Set in Scala and Zurich BT. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, Carleton University.
evyticehT suohsus niagagn The document of an architecture design studio on housing in the city. Mass housing. For a mass society. By all massive means necessary.