HOUSING MASSES
THE
Spring 2012
Housing the Masses Learning from Berlin
Joanna Hiew 07038240
PREFACE
This portfolio has been prepared as part of an 8 week 5th year MArch studio assignment in the Manchester School of Architecture for the Spring 2012.
Student Name Joanna Hiew Tutors Dr. Isabelle Doucet, Griff Evans Studio Introduction The Architecture of Urban Catalyst studio unit centres on the experimenta-
tion and understanding of the different shapes architecture can take in order to function as an urban catalyst. The overall aim of the studio was to become a place for testing the notion of catalyst in different geographical, methodological and thematic settings. The investigation focused on collective housing schemes that can be read as urban entities composed of individual ‘cells’ for living (through processes of repetition, (urban) pattern, aesthetic and formal homogenisation) and urban, collective functions (launderettes, shopping, gardens) that often turn such large- scale schemes into cities-within-the-city.
Aim It is constructed as an architectural narrative composed of 3 studies and design research exercises based
on housing typologies from Berlin. Each exercsise was carried out on a site in Manchester in the form of workshops or charettes by integrating different kinds of knowledge (typological, historical, theoretical, reflective).
Theme The central theme addressed in all 3 exercises had been to explore the relation between public and
private spaces, particularly the common spaces that are shared between the users, how the space can be maximised to its full potential as opposed to being dead spaces.
“... typology presents itself as the study of types of elements that cannot be further reduced, elements of a city as well as of an architecture... no type can be identified with only one form, even if all architectural forms are reducible to types. The process of reduction is a necessary, logical operation, and it is impossible to talk about problems of form without this presupposition. In this sense, all architectural theories are also theories of typology, and in an actual design it is difficult to distinguish the two moments.� Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, 1966
DESIGN METHODOLOGY Discussed as a group during cross unit review on the 17th February 2012.
WORKS OVERVIEW
Google map of site
Chorlton is a suburban area of the city of Manchester, England. It is located approximately 4 miles southwest of Manchester city centre. Traditionally an upper working class/ lower middle class neighbourhood. the past 10 years there is a wave of gentrification taking place in the area. The place is slowly but surely becoming dominated by young working professionals. Even so, there is still a significant proportion of working class group. Meanwhile, the contemporary centre of Chorlton is an attractive place for students alike.
12 Edge Lane, Chorlton
01
Gentrified villas Row houses with pockets 19th Century Mietskaserne
Living in a grand Victorian villa is a status that everyone dreams of. How can we reinterpret the idea of the grand villa in gentrifying Chorlton?
“In the Mietskaserne housing estates they are next-door neighbours - the children from the basement flat goes along the same hallways to the free school just as the those children from the upper class go to the grammar school. Shoemaker Wilhelm in the attic and the bedridden old Mistress Schulz in the backyard tenement with her daughter running a meager seamstress business they will be the best-known persons on the first floor. It allows to pass on a dish of the day, to help in times of sickness, to give away a warm jacket, and bring in incentives for additional schooling. From all that which will come out as comfortable relations between so differently socialized people it allows the giver to ennoble himself on the situation. In between the extremes of the social classes the poor from the second to fourth story will be nurtured by the cultural life of the civil cervants, artists, professors and teachers. This will come out as beneficial to the society even when it would only be that the latter would have a daily silent example in their sight of those which were mixed among them.� James Hobrecht, early 19th century
MIESTSKASERNE Also named as ‘rental barracks’, the Mietskaserne is a dense housing type developed in the early 1900s in response of the boom of Industrialisation in Berlin. The building blocks were deeped and filled with multiple courtyards. An important feature of the Mietskaserne is the access separation between the front and the back of the buildings. The courtyard is neither a void for ventilation nor a meeting place for residents. The staircases are placed in the middle of each building and not in the inner corners. Aerial Plan
Dense living
Typical block of Miestkaserne
Access and courtyards
BERLINER ZIMMER The Berliner Zimmer is a response of the corner space from the Mietskaserne. It is a large room with a view of the courtyard with a relatively small window. Thus, the room is usually dark. It also acts as a transit room ie there is no corridor.
Apartment on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees Paris 1900
9 Koniggratzer Strasse Berlin mid 1890s
The dining room was pushed deep into the site, displaced behind the staircase and hall. There was a hierachy in circulation beginning with the wide hallway, followed by a perpendicular gallery and finally the narrow corridor. The flow of circulation was continuous.
The anteroom acted as a central node of circulation. The dining room was accessed via the anteroom. Circulation was compartmentalised.
Potential room spaces were compromised for continuity of circulation.
37 Kurfurstendamm Berlin 1906 On an obtuse- angled corner site, the dining room was placed facing the street in order to accommdate all rooms with some natural light.
110 Kurfurstendamm Berlin 1908
WHO? THE GENTRIFIED The Gentrifieds are people who... have high disposable income, want to start a family, between the age of 21-35, are young professionals, and want to get on the property ladder.
EXPLORING FRONT/BACK YARD The frontyards of typical victorian terrace houses do not encourage social interaction between neighbours. Their backyards are often underused as private spaces for the residents. By placing the ‘backyard’ within the house as an internal courtyard ensures that privacy is maintained and the frontyards as a central communal space to maximise social interaction.
Typical victorian terrace house
Proposed row house with internal courtyard
MASSING STUDIES Each massings were explored to provide shared spaces between neighbours as well as private spaces.
Existing
Courtyard
Mietskaserne
Blocks
Row Houses
Row Houses staggered to create pockets of open spaces
Courtyard terraced
Courtyard terraced divided
Strip
U shaped
Courtyard to provide privacy to individual units
Stepped volumes to relieve central open space
SKETCH DIAGRAMS
SITE PLAN 1/1000
PLANS & SECTION 1/200
Second Floor Plan
First Floor Plan
Ground Floor Plan
PHYSICAL MODEL
02
SOCIAL HOUSING Modular Housing (MoHo) Inter- war Siedlungen
Mixing tenures are increasingly popular and widely accepted as a solution to rebalance the communities. The question is, then, how do we provide enough flexibility to meet residents’ demand? Can we build one size to fit all?
BOTTOM UP APPROACH What if we can approach from the residents and find out their needs and wants to provide the best possible housing quality?
SKETCH DIAGRAM OF FLEXIBILITY Diagrams showing how different configurations can be achieved within a fixed volume surrounding the central service core.
Modern apartments will only be a success when women understand the new concept and bring it to life.
Die neue Wohnung The idea of The new Dwelling was dedicated to women and on how to make their lives easier through modern designs during the pre- war Germany. Taut emphasised the Japanese house as a model for the organisation of space. He applied the principles of the efficient kitchen by American writer Christine Frederick to the apartment plans, removing loose furnitures and the underused parlor to create a larger L- shaped living room that connects directly with the kitchen. Bruno Taut (1880 - 1938)
Typical ‘unrationalised’ aprtment block floor plan
‘rationalised’ apartment plan
‘rationalised’ kitchen plan
The Japanese house
The problem of rationalising the housewife’s work is equally important to all classes of the society. Both the middle-class women, who often work without any help in their homes, and also the women of the worker class, who often have to work in other jobs, are overworked to the point that their stress is bound to have serious consequences for public health at large.
the Frankfurter Küche In 1926 the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed the world’s first standardised kitchen for architect Ernst May’s social housing project in Frankfurt, Germany.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897 - 2000)
Plan of the Frankfurt Kitchen indicating its labour saving features, 1927
Margarete Sch端tte-Lihotzky, Frankfurter K端che (Frankfurt Kitchen). 1926-7.
STANDARDISATION OF THE KITCHEN The kitchen unit was designed to be mass produced with minimum space utilised. With the different configurations of the residential unit, the kitchen unit remains the same.
“... after food and clothing, housing is man’s most important material need. Therefore it has to be produced in large quantites and in the best possible quality.” Ernst May, Das Neue Frankfurt, 1930
EXISTENZ MINIMUM PLANS The concept of the ‘existenz-minimum’ dwelling was that the housing units were designed as minimal space apartments or houses through functional design and built in kitchen and bathroom equipments.
PREFABRICATION OF MODULAR UNITS TYPE I Each residential unit can be configured to suit resident’s preference. Whether it is an outdoor space, or an extra bedroom.
PREFABRICATION OF MODULAR UNITS TYPE II
MODULAR CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM The prefabricated residential units can be ‘slot in’ to the structural frame. Although the whole construction centres around modularity and mass production, the variation in units create a more dynamic external facade.
SITE PLAN 1/1000
PLANS 1/500 With the residential units above ground, the landscape can be maximised and shared between all residents. Both private home owners and social home owners have the same house plan and look no different from the external facade.However they will have separate access. into the building.
TENURE BREAKDOWN DIAGRAM The private and social tenures look the same from exterior and incorporate the same plans but are accessed separately.
Massing studies
03
STUDENT HOUSING Machine on the landscape Post- war Trabantenstaedte
The idea of an existenz minimum plan for all the student beds is maintained in order to increase density and hence its viability as a student housing. How can we then move beyond the machine for living and create a machine that is alive with active spaces and dynamic human flow?
“Our aim is to create a true ‘street in the air’, each ‘street’ having a large number of people dependent on it for access, and in addition some streets are to be thoroughfares - that is, leading to places - so that they will each acquire special characteristics - be identified in fact. Each part of each ‘street in the air’ will have sufficient people accessed from it for it to become a social entity and be within reach of a much larger number at the same level.” Peter & Alison Smithson, 1952
Photomontage of street deck, Golden Lane Competition In the Golden Lane competition, the Smithsons proposed a low- rise snake like housing with wide and continuous “streets in the sky”. This was an attempt to humanise Modernist urban theory and criticising the dangerous and oprresive interior corridors of the Unite d’Habitation.
PRECEDENT STUDY Park Hill, Sheffield The idea of the streets of the air derived from the Golden Lane competition was later realised in the Park Hill project, designed by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith in 1961. Each corridor is designed as a usable social space that is 3.5m wide, on every third floor and stretches to more than 3km. A bridge link connects each block into a megastructure.
Site Plan
Typical Plan
1/1500
Street deck in Park Hill flats, 1961
“The invention of a new house is the invention of a new kind of street. Because the street in the late 19th, early 20th century was where the children were, and where the people talked and all that, despite the climate being against it. The street was the arena of life.� Peter Smithson, interview with Colomina, 2000
PLAN SKETCHES
Existing
Old & New
M tio
Main Circulation & addion of 2nd new wing
Link bridges
Beds within enclosure
SITE PLAN 1/1000
TYPOLOGIES 1/100
Typical student bed
Typical bed for disabled students
Student beds will be located at the new wings behind and adjacent to the existing listed building.
Beds for disabled students will be located within the existing listed building for ease of access.
SECTION DIAGRAM
Typical separation of function
Typical vertical circulation
Proposed function & circulation
DIAGRAMS SHOWING PRIVATE BEDS & SHARED ACTIVITY ZONES (INDOOR COMMON ROOMS & OUTDOOR TERRACES)
PLANS 1/500
Ground Floor Plan
First Floor Plan
Second Floor Plan
Third Floor Plan
DETAIL OF PLAN 1/100
3D DIAGRAM
Existing
Activity zones
Circulation
Open terrace
Final Massing
AXOMETRIC DIAGRAM The indoor and outdoor activity zones are placed within a highly densed block of student beds diagonally. A wide stairway which can be accessed directly from the main entrance ensures a constant dynamic student flow throughout the entire complex.
PHYSICAL MODEL
COMPARISON 3 typological groups have been defined on the plot area 4194m2: row houses, modular flats and low rise apartments.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Exercise 1 Bodenschatz, H. (2010). Berlin Urban Design. A Brief History. Dom Publishers. Klahr, D.M. (2011). Luxury Apartments with a Tenement Heart. Journal of Society of Architectural Historians. Vol 70. No 3 September 2011. Ladd, B. (1997). The Ghosts of Berlin. Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. University of Chicago. Exercise 2 Bauer- Wurster, C. (1965). The Social Front of Modern Architecture in the 1930s. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol 24. No 1. Bullock, N. (1988). First the Kitchen, then the Facade. Journal of Design History. vol1. no 3-4. Darling, E. (2000). What the Tenants Think of Kensal House: Experts’ Assumptions versus Inhabitants’ Realities in the Modern Home. Journal of Architectural Education. Vol 53. No 3. Doucet, I., Cupers, K. (2009) Agency in Architecture: Rethinking Criticality in Theory and Practice. Footprint Delft School of Design Journal. No 4. Henserson, S.R. (2009). Housing the Single Woman. The Frankfurt Experiment. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol 68. No 3. Heyden, M. (N/A). Evolving Participatory Design: A Report from Berlin. Reaching Beyond. Field Journal. Vol 2-1.
Exercise 3 Crinson, M. (2006). The Uses of Nostalgia: Stirling and Gowan’s Preston Housing. Journal of Society of Architectural Historians. Vol 65. No 2. Crinson, M. (2007). Picturesque and Intransigent: Creative Tension and Collaboration in the Early House Projects of Stirling and Gowan. Architectural History. Vol 50. Crinson, M., Zimmerman, C. (2010). Neo-avant garde and Postmodern. Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond. Studies in British Art 21. The Yale Centre of British Art. Cupers, K. (2011). The Expertise of Participation: Mass Housing and Urban Planning in Post- war France. Planning Perspectives. Vol 26. No 1. Hans, S. (1959). Rebuilding Berlin. The Town Planning Review. Vol 29. Nr 4. Highmore, B. (Routledge 2001). Streets in the Air: Alison and Peter Smithson’s Doorstep Philosophy. In Neo- avant garde and Postmodern. Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond. Others Firley, E., Stahl, C. (2009). The Urban Housing Handbook: Shaping the Fabric of Our Cities. John Wiley. Förster, W. (2006). Housing in the 20th and 21st Centuries. München.