D3 Housing

With an ever increasing population and a demand for more and more housing stock within urban centres, we are facing a reduction in green open spaces. Statistics indicate that in the 1900's only 10% of the world's population lived within cities, in 2007 this had risen to 50% and it is expected that by 2050 this will increase to 75%. With such statistics, the question of urban realm is becoming a crucial one to answer. Parallel to this the production mechanism for the support of cities and the efficiency of those mechanisms are being strained.   Our project attempts to look at the high-rise typology in combination with public realm and small scale farmland (production surfaces) to address and rebalance the urban condition. This change will challenge the current mono-functionality of buildings and begin to take into consideration and take responsibility for other issues.   The design itself is derived through a algorithm which is capable of assessing aspects ranging from surfaces to floor area ration, orientation and solar gains. This allows the process driven design to understand different arrangements and combinations of a simple cubed volume and to be able to choose the best suited to the conditions. Once optimized at the local scale, the types are combined in regional batches where external spaces are considered. The combination and arrangement of single open spaces next to each other result in regional batches being created where larger scale social interaction and production can take place. The entire system is reliant on a bottom up approach, where the numerous combinations are tested and the most optimum option is chosen. This allows the design to evolve to include private, semi-private and public amenity spaces, which can hold a range of functions, from Friday markets to exercise classes.