Home in the city

Home in the City MSc2 ARCH8 - June 2013

In a society with a growing conscience, initiatives that revolve around sustainability are evolving in hyper speed. With buildings and transport dominating the energy consumption, a clear possibility for architecture reveals itself. In an exposition, the project tries to slow down to a speed where the process of developing sustainable zero-energy housing becomes graspable, and expands the understanding for the theme. Situated within the border between the urban city life and the suburban street life, a compromise with the best from both is chased through theoretical readings and contemporary case studies. By iteratively challenging the chased solution with the sustainable terminology, the process ensures to integrate all design aspects into one considered, coherent solution – into a home in the city.

The main concept fuses the great horizontal qualities from the suburban street into a scheme where the inevitable verticality of the dense city is extended into one ascending flow of qualities.

The climax is the framed view towards north emphasising the identity of the site. The project embraces new outdoor areas and introduces outdoor spaces with room for everyone, in every scale. With the use of clever zoning the programme of the project is integrated into the existing flows. Parking is located near the road and mixed use is occupying the ground level near Limfjorden. The architectural response in apartment scale is expressed through the additive principle to maintain the human scale in the ascending building complex. In order to create a diverse and fragmented expression subtle initiatives are applied to the additive principle and in contrast to the vivacious dwellings, the expression in the ground floor wraps around the base to introduce calmness.