Area of Study:
In the US, suburban single family houses are foreclosing and their failed mortgages bankrupting the economy while cities and urbanizing areas face major housing shortages. In New York, housing is in such short supply and lacking in quality that residents propose revisiting brownstone rowhousing, a typology that is over 100 years old. Is there no better model for a residential building typology than a century-old brick and mortar construction?
The world is undergoing urbanization and becoming a collection of dense aggregations, gradually and sometimes rapidly, and only in the US does the suburban condition still thrive. Yet this model has now shown its serious flaws and with a rising interest in “living in the city,” people are gradually moving from the suburbs to the city, forsaking the ideal detached single family home for modern townhouses and flats in large urban apartment blocks in. Yet these new residential constructions are hastily designed, built, and branded to attract and accommodate the quickly growing desire for a more affordable and “urban” lifestyle. Though residential housing is becoming denser, they are planned without regard to what conditions constitute and urban culture. These dense close-packed dwellings are still large islands unto themselves, with no mixed-use programs such as retail and amenities. The use of the car is still necessary to get from home to school to store. Jeff Kipnis stated that the problem with the suburbs is the garage. If you solve the problem of the garage you solve the suburban problem. While the garage refers to the car and its very restricting guidelines for use and lifestyle; his point reflects a much larger issue of lifestyle and proximity/density. Only by breaking the island nature of basic functions(housing, retail, work) into smaller integrated forms can the suburban problem be solved.
There has always been intense interest from architects and planners, from post-war American suburbia to Soviet-bloc social housing to the visions of city by Archigram and currently the efforts to house rapidly growing populations in the explosion of growth and urbanization that is China. All of these efforts are grandiose in nature, they deal with vast breadths of population and topics of urban and city planning. Utopian ideas and their accompanying manifestos are now defunct and out of date, too large in scope and breadth, too small in the depth of their solutions that were ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of the built landscape.
Perhaps a reaction to this is to narrow the scope, not to address THE problem but a problem, a particular issue, to manageable and scalable goals and definitions in which architecture can create practical and attainable solutions in the effort to house people in the city. What I propose is a bottom-up model, a localized solution to a localized problem that can deal adaptively. This model is not THE solution, the answer to today’s problems of urbanization and need for the next new idea of density and city, but simply a type, a model to be applied to a localized problem within the broad landscape of issues concerning the urban landscape.
In his essay, Programming the Urban Surface, Alex Wall defines the term, “urban surface,” as the extensive and inclusive ground-plane of the city, the field that accommodates buildings, infrastructure, open spaces, neighborhoods and natural habitats. He likens the urban surface to a dynamic agricultural field, which assumes different functions, geometries, distributive arrangements, and appearances as changing circumstance demands. He attributes this adaptability to the planar character of the surface, from its smooth and uninterrupted continuity to its embedded equipment and services. With this analogy Wall defines the goal of designing the urban surface is to increase its capacity to support and diversify activities in time, including activities that cannot be foreseen.
Wall calls for design solutions that recognize the ever changing nature of the urban surface. His call for more fluid and flexible definitions of urban types and elements stems from his assertion that cities are no longer the hierarchical structures of traditional institutional cores but that the future growth of cities lies in the web-like dispersed sprawls that constitute what he defines as the contemporary metropolis. Wall lists several case study projects which demonstrate his idea that singular buildings can be agents for unfolding new urban realities. These projects demonstrate qualities of rebuilding, incorporating, connecting, and intensifying. These qualities enable these projects to become agents of change in the urban surface.
His argument calls not for the ‘design of monuments and masterplans’ but for the careful modification and articulation of the urban surface. His statements assert that there is power and depth in the argument that architecture can make change, not through masterplans and grandiose utopian ideals but through singular projects that are so efficient and smart in their response to its context that they become agents of change, from the bottom up.
As aligned to my goals they may seem, Wall’s projects that exemplify his bottom up agent for change model are seminal projects that every city wishes it could have; the prominent Boulevard that defines the highest notion of city center, the cleverly integrated airport terminal and transit hub, the creative and connective ingenuity of a park. The localized solution that I propose is not limited to being a singular work, but a model that has the ability to adapt and become a type. While a single landmark opera house may supply the needs of an entire city, a singular block of housing does little to satisfy the need of rapidly growing cities. However, there is a strong and logical argument in the case for a singular block of housing to morph into a self-propagating type with the ability to have the same large scale effects and influences on a city that top-down master plans are attributed to best being suited for.
One such example of is the New York brownstone. A simple and efficient type, the ingenuity of this model fueled its propagation and evolution onto the New York city landscape for a span of over 50 years. It was the smartest response to a local problem, the issue of creating housing within a given urban grid in a denser manner than existing models for the growing city. The brownstone type defined and created entire districts and regions, evolving and cementing itself as a distinct character of the city. There are many other housing types that achieved similar levels of ingenuity and popularity, and most of these types emerged from a localized problem and morphed onto other similar urban surfaces.
As stated earlier, this thesis will not be an effort to produce an overarching utopian solution to the need for a new housing model but a far more narrowly defined study and analysis of a small segment of the issue of housing, student housing. Many cities are shaped and defined by their flagship university; the quintessential college-town. These universities are the main industry of their host towns, and therefore the life of the city revolves around the vitality of the university. Universities by nature are more urban than the suburbs of its small dependant host city. There is a well-established and defined sense of community and interaction; there is housing and amenities are social and shared, and most universities promote a car-free pedestrian environment. However insular these universities may be, most cannot accommodate the majority within the confines of its property.
To go along with the continuing growth of nation and society, cities and universities are also undergoing the same growth. They are no longer the isolated focused academic villages of the Jeffersonian era but thriving centers for technology, research and culture. In the United States vast numbers as well as record rates of young adults are attending college, which is quickly burgeoning into a rich cultural, civic, and economic industry. Universities number in the tens of thousands, growing at rates that they cannot keep pace with, lacking in the necessary infrastructure to house the masses of students. Off-campus student housing is a large industry, providing affordable student housing to those no longer able to retain on-campus housing in favor of the next incoming freshman class. These off-campus dwellings are outside the supervision and guidance of the university, and are only constrained and driven by economic concerns of the developer with little intervention from municipal authorities; leaving student housing in a largely neglected state. With the more frugal lifestyles of students and the recent economic downturn, the car is a far less viable option for students living in college towns that were once suburban in nature but becoming denser with the universities growth and the cities concurrent growth to accommodate its main industry. In this fringe sector of housing, there is a genuine desire for a more urban, car-free lifestyle that is at the moment more culturally desirable and affordable.
This thesis project proposes to design a new housing typology, a mixed-use model; that can be deployed in university towns and cities that are undergoing making the transition from suburban to semi-urban/urban. The site will not be in an established urban area, as these areas already carry heavy notions of density, housing, and urban culture. Choosing student housing in a urbanizing suburban city narrows the scope of the architectural endeavor to a manageable project but also provides not a tabula rasa but a context in which it’s fabric is very different from the established urban cities; a context that is still highly charged but infinitely enabling. This housing typology may either fit within the given conditions or may suggest alternative arrangements, within the constraints of the relationship between university, housing, and city. The topic is not a manifesto on urban planning and design, but an architectural endeavor for a specific typology and its accompanying users to affect change in a local and narrowly-defined scope, an architectural type that is imbued with elements of urban design and lifestyle.
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