STUDIO II IN ARCHITECTURE EVDA 582/ARST 444 INSTRUCTOR: Dan Hapton, M.Arch, B.Evds // Sessional Instructor // School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape // University of Calgary // Founder and Principal // Aitch / www.aitch.ca / Calgary, AB // Architectural Designer and Artist // @dan_hapton / www.danhapton.com / Calgary, AB COVER: Familial Compositions, Beatriz Martins
Familial Forms Studio II in Architecture Introduction by Dan Hapton
Familial Forms explores alternative models for collective living that envision optimistic futures for humanity in light of the current global environmental and social justice crises. The students present experimental counter-positionings of form, program, and site to the prevailing forces of carbon-based urbanism. Each step in their working process challenges and reinvents activities of design and planning that are usually taken for granted. Their projects are critiques that question normative standards, seek out unexpected synergies, and reveal the disturbing depth of the existing city’s dependence on environmentally and socially destructive forces.
Contents
FAMILIAL FORMS
Dan Hapton
2-3
HETEROTOPIA
Beatriz Martins
6-19
CALGARY COMMUNE
Gregory Campbell
20-35
BIOLIVE PLACE
Corwin Chung
36-53
CAIRN BUILDING
Ashley Elias
54-67
POWER PLANT DWELLING
Steve Kunz
68-85
HYDROPONIC COOPERATIVE
Matthew Wong
86-97
HABITAT 8
Abira Mirza
98-113
NOMADIC CAMPGROUND
Erika Kirkland
114-127
RUPTURE
Jacob Sunderland
128-139
AN ISLAND
Afra Khademnia
140-151
RETHINKING SOCIAL HOUSING
Noor Kalsi
152-163
Heterotopia What happens when a form attempts to bridge the gap between extreme opposite social classes? By Beatriz Martins
Spaces, like identities, are constructed. Our activities, movements, interactions, and life are limited and shaped by how space is produced. Designed as a response to the modern society we live in, the project is both a place of refuge for those who became a product of our society and a safe place for those whose social systems are failing. The form is composed to emphasize being present at the moment, disconnected from its surroundings. Through sensory and visual moments, residents are invited to meditate on the space itself, activate their senses and imagination, distancing themselves from the vicious society they find themselves in. Through dilemmas played out in space, the theme of identity, and the relationship between uneasy composites of multiple cultures and backgrounds, Heterotopia wants to show that the dynamics of ourselves and the spaces surrounding us are inevitably the same.
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HETEROTOPIA
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HETEROTOPIA
In conclusion, we live in a place with much noise that dictates how we should act and behave, and, unfortunately, people who do not immediately fit within these standards are ignored and mistreated. The intention of Heterotopia was to create a project that shows how the dynamics of space and how we behave and treat other people are highly connected. By generating new contemplative spaces with limited visual and sensory connections to the outside city due to the glazed windows, there are new opportunities of questioning social hierarchies and interactions between different social groups that can create a fresh and hopefully better narrative.
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Calgary Commune By Gregory Campbell
Inspired by research into outlier communities outside of the Carbon City, the Calgary Commune Concept aims to hone a similar outcome as that of my precedent commune, Poole‘s Land. For over 20 years the commune hosted many temporary and permanent residents , many of whom were previously experiencing homelessness. It was a place many went to escape and acted as a beacon of hope for those lost and disregarded by the consequences of the Carbon City model. This Calgary Commune Concept, located along 9th Ave SE and McLeod Trail SE, looks to create an alternative living framework that is able to act as a self-sustaining island with in downtown Calgary. Through the monetization of urban farming and renting out of commercial space, after initial funding is provided, the Commune would have enough to sustain itself indefinitely. Agriculture is a historically important part of communes, and many other outlier communities, as it provides sustenance and forms of payable labour. By combining a market with commercial and retail space , the Commune is able to sell the food it grows and rent out any available space. The development of the massing 20 | Gregory Campbell
occurred through a series of estrangement operations to introduce forms with unique architectural potential. Taking inspiration from the campsite organization of Poole’s Land, a series of masses are connected together through an armature to create a sort-of vertical campsite with a series of “trails” leading to the various parts of the program. The building also functions similarly to Poole’s Land, but rather than campers, it is a host to drop-in rooms for those experiencing homelessness and more permanent housing for people who need to escape the harsh realities of the Carbon City. The Commune Concept also aims to empower individuals by providing a variety of temporary and permanent housing and jobs. Employment may come from urban agriculture, general maintenance, or through one of the commercial/retail stores within the Commune. There is also a safe injection site located within the program to provide immediate help for people who use drugs, who are also more likely to experience homelessness. This aims to develop a healthy understanding and destigmatization around people experiencing homelessness and people who use drugs within the general public.
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Biolive Place By Corwin Chung
Designed as a response to Calgary’s landfill externalities, the Biolive Place is a reactionary and alternative approach to multi-unit residential buildings. It is a synthesis of research collected on Calgary’s landfill processes, commune style living, micro living, and alternative energy sources. The research was integrated into a massing consisting of an aggregation of musical instruments that were joined together using various slicing and slipping processes. The premise behind the project is centered on the diversion of food and plastic waste away from landfills. 86% of Calgary’s waste is divertable, with 65% of that being food waste, and 15% of that being plastic waste. With that in mind, there are two primary elements within the programming that address these issues. A bottle depot is introduced to the building as not only a means to recycle plastics, but to provide a form of financial self sustenance for residents and the building itself. Next, biogas units are placed on each residential floor of the building as a way to divert food waste while producing usable electrical energy and fertilizers. Anerobic processes within these units break down the food waste, and
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converts it into the same methane that is released from landfills. Instead of allowing it to rise to the atmosphere however, this methane is sequestered as “biogas” to produce electricity. Fertilizers are also produced and applied to a communal garden on each floor. To emphasize the importance of both the bottle depot and biogas units to the building’s operation, a commune-style framework of living was developed. It highlights that the biogas units are a shared responsibility of all residents, with the bottle depot providing work and a source of income for everyone. As such, shared spaces dominate the programming and is centered around the biogas units, physically and metaphorically.
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Cairn Building What does a building that challenges conventional modes of living and design look like and what should it do? By Ashley Elias
The Cairn building prioritizes the community and seeks to enhance the livability of Calgary’s downtown area by exhibiting an optimistic future for the vanishing corporate district. Each step in the design process of the Cairn Building was carried out as a series of critiques against the normative and seclusive standards of living that area result of our carbon environment; instead the Cairn Building embraces the optimistic alternative of cooperative housing as an outlier community. Influenced by Calgary’s urban externalities of the oil and gas industry, the Cairn Building challenges the harsh and totalizing forces of urbanization. The cooperative living community represents a move towards property as a mode of care rather than profit. The building is unconventional in form, political and legal structure, and through its large distribution of meaningful shared spaces.
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CAIRN BUILDING
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CAIRN BUILDING
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Power Plant Dwelling What is the experience of living with radical infrastructure? By Steve Kunz
This waste-to-energy power plant surrounded by a commune dwelling creates an intersection between how and where human beings live. What is the experience of living with radical infrastructure (like a power plant)? What is the experience of living in a self-sustaining mini-city? The province of Alberta is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for its energy production. Power Plant Dwelling creates a discussion about where and how energy is produced. Within the structure, residents must move through passages between shared communal spaces and living units that interface directly with the waste-to-energy power plant. Interacting with the production of energy becomes a part of daily life (creating agonism - a potentially positive political conflict within the city). With energy and its production at the forefront of this architecture, conversations about energy consumption and usage may more easily take place.
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Hydroponic Cooperative By Matthew Wong
This co-operative housing project located at 606 4 St. SW is a synthesis of work produced this semester. It showcases hydroponics as its main feature, allowing residents to grow their own food. The integration of hydroponics was inspired by Red Vienna co-operative settlements, which highlighted the garden as their most important self-sustaining function. In terms of massing, my project is an aggregation of iconic buildings that have been disassociated from existing iconography - a combination of several Villa Savoyes, the Bank of China tower, and the Sydney Opera House. Rooms are laid out along the perimeter of the main floors, and circulation is arranged in a way that forces people moving through the building to interact with the hydroponics areas. There is also a public access route that takes people over the Sydney Opera House section and onto a balcony which provides access to the third floor hydroponics area. Communal spaces like the kitchens, washrooms, as well as public event space ensure that the housing project can be integrated into Calgary’s existing urbanity.
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HYDROPONIC COOPERATIVE
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Alternative Living Framework
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Habitat 8 Housing as a Social Need, Not a Market Commodity. By Abira Mirza
Studying monasteries and first nation reserves as precedents, my project is an exploration of privacy, as well as developing a space where housing is not just a box for someone to live in but rather a “semiautonomous island within the sea of mainstream society.” I developed a group of pavilions that are placed on a plinth that rises high above the ground plane. Using camouflage as a method of manipulating geometry and the publics perception, the plinth consumes the pavilions, revealing only what is chosen to be revealed. Programmatically, the project fosters living as a collective, with responsibility to not only each other but to the property.
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Nomadic Campground By Erika Kirkland
This nomadic campground project is a culmination of this entire semester. Nomadic-ism informed my program and ideas around what I wanted my building to do. Being a nomad means usually not having a permanent residence and moving from place to place. It is also about a sense of community when we look at more traditional nomadic groups. This building is designed to be a campground and a communal space for anyone in the city or out of town. It features entrances on different levels of the structure that are accessed by physically climbing it and the rest of the exterior is for anyone to walk/hike or take a rest on. The form came into being from several attempts at stacking familial forms and covering them with a material. The stacked forms later become entrances, rooms and ways to divide the space while also being structural supportive. The interior is comprised of four levels that are all interconnected through ramp ways formed by the floor levels. This means that there are no stairs. Open areas on all floors allow for campers to choose wherever they would like to set up camp. There is a communal kitchen on the main floor, bathing facilities on the second floor and a living area/lounge space on the third floor.
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NOMADIC CAMPGROUND
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Alternative Living Framework
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Rupture Rupture is two things. A Parasite and a Commune. By Jacob Sunderland
This project is about solving the issue of excess within the context of Downtown Calgary (affectionately known as CowTown). In studying the impact of Slaughter houses on in the environment and mapping out the shear volume of them. I was struck. The excessiveness of the slaughter and steakhouse. I found particularly offensive that held above the streets at the top of a tower was Ruth Chris’s in combination with The Palliser Parkade that hosts parking for downtown Calgary. I then turned back towards my earlier studies of Nomadic Sami People from this studio. A people characterized not by the architecture of their living but the importance of the objects to these people to make a determinate living. This is what lead to the “Rupture” the parasite that rooted itself into the palliser parkade in order to juxtapose these urban wastes. But also finding a form of massing that juxtaposed at the scale of city. Finding form that is in a way Alien to the city and supports an estranged program of living that contrasts the urban environment of Calgary: The Commute, parking, walk
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to work, walk to car, commute to home, work till bed. I wanted my new form of living to support the lifestyle of peoples who are constantly traveling for work, constantly selling their own products. Rupture features a programmatic structure that supports living in either fully subsidized rent through labour or paying rent for those who wish to work outside the Commune. Featuring vertical agricultural systems, an education centre, and market place this projects seeks to create a micro-city away from the excess of Cowtown.
RUPTURE
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RUPTURE
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RUPTURE
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RUPTURE
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An Island By Afra Khademnia
The first diagram is a proposal for a semi-selfsustained women’s shelter. Like monasteries This shelter is for the women who cannot or do not want to live on their own and they seek a safe place to live. Like monasteries they do not own the property. The property is owned and funded by the government or a non-profit organization. Again, like monasteries here occupants share the responsibilities and spaces. What I’ve learned studying monasteries is that one of the main aspects of monastic lifestyle was that monks had to dedicate themselves to prayer, meditation and study, and not worry about worldly matters. For this purpose, the monks required a monastery which was self-sufficient, and which provided all the necessary facilities. In this regard, monasteries can be defined as archipelagos consisting of different islands. Some autonomous and some dependent. I picked some key elements which I have learned form studying monasteries to plan an ISLAND as a women’s shelter in downtown Calgary, that provides a safe environment for the women who seek a safe place for themselves and their children.
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AN ISLAND
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AN ISLAND
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Rethinking Social Housing By Noor Kalsi
This social housing unit is located near 6 Ave SW and 2 St SW, in Calgary’s Downtown core. The following work displays the semester-long exploration of social housing and experiments with form as well. The final concept revolves around social housing being a modular system. A core part of this system uses these “inflated” parts to define space, which can be quickly modified with interior panels. The large continuation of spaces was inspired from Canadian mega-structure architecture, such as Scarborough college in Canada. This did also inspire the overall massing of the building as well - while the study of bubble architecture took the project in a direction to be more flexible when programming space for current and future use. Additionally, the building directly connects to a +15 unit - which creates a discussion around what breaking Calgary’s single use core could look like. In the context of this project, it is about using the existing +15 infrastructure to not only encourage residences to connect to other nearby public areas, but also opens the possibility of citizens visiting. This would be under the idea that they would have limited time access to the library and lounge area - which provides opportunities to connect to different spaces and with different individuals. When thinking about connecting spaces and people together, it opens the conversation about living standards - and what they mean to different groups of people. 152 | Noor Kalsi
RETHINKING SOCIAL HOUSING
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STUDIO II IN ARCHITECTURE EVDA 582/ARST 444 INSTRUCTOR: Dan Hapton, M.Arch, B.Evds // Sessional Instructor // School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape // University of Calgary // Founder and Principal // Aitch / www.aitch.ca / Calgary, AB // Architectural Designer and Artist // @dan_hapton / www.danhapton.com / Calgary, AB COVER: Familial Compositions, Beatriz Martins
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