NOTACOURTYARDHOUSE

Hustle Hub Housing Competition - 2023 A Design Proposal for a Youth Housing Competition Project - Individual Moscow, Russia

A central garden and a community residing on the edges of nature! This project deals with the problem of housings in the urban periphery and tries to establish a new relationship with the landscape through a simple act of embracing the nature. The underlying idea of the project is based on a huge shared garden that is surrounded by a series of housing in a centripetal arrangement all facing the garden. The unique location of the site in the periphery of Moscow and the presence of a vast agricultural lands leaves the site of the project with a significant spatial openness that is so crucial to preserve. Hence, the nature within the site forms the backbone of the project by turning into a shared garden. The principle idea is to keep the site as free and open as possible by pushing the new housing development to the edges. This project avoids the punctual integration of housing blocks and instead through incorporating the courtyard typology tries to give a significant attention to the existing landscape.

The garden in this project acts as a focal point to shape a strong sense of community and is surrounded by 4 blocks of housing accommodating 3 groups of people. Young, migrant/local and the working population of 20-35 years of age. The biggest aim of this project is to create adaptable and optimized living spaces that give the residents adequate freedom to personalize their own space.

This project is comprised of two parts: The shared garden and the housing units on the edges. The plan is based on a perfect square initiated by the garden which is simple crop of the land. 4 rectangular shape buildings on the edges form the residential units and the 4 figurative objects on each corner are the main entrances to the garden and the housing units.

The initial idea and the resultant mass brings up the question of how to articulate the garden to the residential units and to create a more profound connection rather than a simple view? Following this very first question comes the idea of how to break down the verticality of housing units and create a more interconnected volume. To tackle this, a gradient is registered in the project affecting both the program and the form of the building. The first gradient shapes the garden and runs horizontally creating three loosely defined areas. First is the thin strip of the land in front of the housing units divided into small vegetable garden with dense planting. The middle zone is planted with meadow and create a pleasant flat surface with different greenery and flowers. The central part is densely populated with perennials and is covered with a more wild natural plantation. The second gradient runs through the project vertically defining the core program of the housing block. Three levels of two-story housing units are designed for the three groups of residents which subsequently results in spaces with different rental/ownership period concerning each group. Furthermore the presence of common spaces increases in each level with double height terraces and multifunctional rooms.

4th Floor Plan - A Big Co-working Space

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