Some find the 64-square-foot size and seeming flimsiness of such tiny houses inhumane, while others believe they’re an important stepping stone to getting people off the street permanently. The architects feel that Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village was always meant to be transitional, giving occupants a sense of security and ownership as well as access to necessary services and facilities until they can move on to more stable housing. They expanded upon that idea in their latest project, creating larger permanent homes for disabled and formerly homeless veterans.

The firm certainly has the experience to back up its ideas. They’ve been creating shelters for vulnerable populations for over 20 years. Six years ago, they partnered with nonprofit developer Restore Neighborhoods Los Angeles and community bank Genesis LA to create a variety of housing prototypes that could help ease the homelessness and housing affordability crises in California. These projects are all rooted in the idea that everyone deserves dignity and a sense of community.

Located in the South Los Angeles community of the same name (just south of Watts and northwest of Compton), Willowbrook Apartments is a seven-unit complex occupying an awkwardly shaped, long-vacant plot of land close to public transit and a community church. Each unit is 300 square feet and includes a private bathroom, kitchenette, and universal design features for accessibility.

Galley-style kitchens and plentiful natural light create a feeling of expansiveness. The units are mirrored back-to-back to save space, and they’re all anchored to a communal outdoor space. A taller structure offers a community meeting room, storage space, and offices to form a “coherent urban campus, even on a small scale.”

The colors are acid-bright, with neon yellow paths winding around small stone patios and drought-tolerant landscaping. The architects wanted it all to feel very California: cheerful, sunny, and fresh. “Each bend and turn in the path provides real or implied mindful pause from the street to the front door, enhancing the separation from the public realm to the private,” the team explains. “This is something that is meaningful and critical for all residents, but even more so for those that have previously been unhoused.”

The complex will serve as a model for similar developments. The team chooses urban infill lots that are considered less than ideal by most developers, inserting either individual affordable starter homes costing $200,000, 5-bedroom duplexes for troubled teens, or small communities for vulnerable populations, like Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village and Willowbrook Apartments. The projects aim to be livable, reproducible, and anything but depressing.

“I hope this project captures the imagination of the culture, showing how such housing can actively enhance its neighborhood, no matter where the residents lived previously,” says Michael Lehrer, founder and president of Lehrer Architects. “This is critical to destigmatize these types of housing projects, and to destigmatize the people who live there, demonstrating the true beauty of complete neighborhoods that take care of all residents.”

The post Lehrer Architects Create Cheerful Permanent Housing for LA’s Disabled Vets first appeared on Dornob.

When machines can produce stunning masterpieces that mimic a human’s signature style, that artist’s work can suddenly seem less valuable. But a recent project by Manas Bhatia shows us one way in which artificial intelligence could enhance our creativity instead of replacing it. Envisioning what organic architecture of the future could look like, “Symbiotic Architecture” breaks through our understanding of what’s actually possible and asks us to think about our built environment a little differently.

Bhatia, an architectural designer based in India, uses the AI art generator Midjourney as a tool to overcome his own conscious and subconscious assumptions. He’s particularly interested in finding sustainable solutions that are able to withstand climate change by acting more like natural structures than artificial environments. For Symbiotic Architecture, he asked the program to combine an apartment building with Hyperion, a towering 380-foot redwood in California that’s considered the world’s tallest-known living tree. He entered combinations of words like “giant,” “hollowed,” “tree,” “stairs,” and “facade,” continuing to alter the prompts until he got the results he wanted.

The final digital works of art produced by the program are nothing less than stunning, even if they seem completely impossible in the real world. Massive coastal redwoods the size of Hyperion and even larger are pierced with glass-clad dwelling units stacked on top of each other. Little sprouts of leaves pop up here and there between windows and balconies. The images give us an idea of what the world might look like if human dwellings were more like those of ants and other creatures that build their homes from the world around them. The idea is that the structures we live in breathe and potentially even grow as a part of nature instead of attempting to be separate from it.

Would we really want to insert architecture into existing groves of sensitive, slow-growing, and endangered redwoods? Definitely not, but that’s not really the point. Just because our existing construction methods, materials, and technologies aren’t capable of producing safe and durable buildings that look like this doesn’t mean we can’t develop new ones that can. Working backwards from fantastical ideas could produce amazing innovations that allow us to burst out of our minimalist architectural stagnancy. For instance, it’s not that hard to imagine something like a naturally reproducing fungus-based material growing to a desired shape and size around a framework of modular living pods with an appearance resembling these giant inhabitable trees.

“The project began as an AI-based investigation into the interactions we have all had with nature, such as appreciating a tree’s shade on a hot day, reading a newspaper in a courtyard under a tree, or simply hanging out in a park to take in the changing hues of the leaves,” Bhatia explains. “Building on these observations came the idea of a ‘utopian future’ in which buildings are not machines made of steel or concrete…Instead, the structure is alive and has the ability to grow and breathe.”

The post Symbiotic Architecture: Artificial Intelligence Envisions Living Housing Built into Redwood Trees first appeared on Dornob.

Now, the forward-thinking Espacio 18 has turned their exceptional interior design eye toward yet another Oaxaca project. This time, it’s a group of residences in Colonia Reforma, just five short minutes from the city’s downtown area. Dubbed “Pensamientos Residencial” (Residential Thoughts), these four homes add to the studio’s impressive oeuvre with their distinctive focus on unifying architectural aspects. Their alluring apertures and connective patios amplify the structures’ openness and community-minded approach while also showcasing Espacio’s love of natural light and warm neutral tones.

The project addresses a local need for residential development. Rising land and property costs and increasing gentrification have led to more locals seeking housing on the city’s outskirts. Pensamientos Residencial was born as a result of this, commissioned by a real estate agency and catalyzed by the architects’ knowledge of the area and desire to repopulate the city’s suburbs.

The residences are divided into four distinct three-level houses, each with a land area of 120 square meters and laid out in the same way: an enclosed ground level/social area, a first floor including private areas, secondary rooms, and study/TV area, and a second floor that encompasses the main room and other services. While these layouts may seem pretty standard, the spaces are elevated through patios on each level, each with their own high-rise style walls that ensure privacy despite their proximity to other residences. The spaces are designed with flexibility and usability in mind — the template exists as a palette for residents to add their own stamp of originality through personalized interior touches.

The exterior, like many of Espacio’s projects, is deceptively spartan, comprised of clean lines and simple utilitarian touches dominated by neutral tones. Built with finishes made from locally-sourced wood from nearby spots like Huanacaxtle and reinforced with both steel and volcanic stones, the homes are built to last. And if the demand for housing on the outskirts of Oaxaca continues to increase, these structures will no doubt be the first of many in the area.

The post Espacio 18’s Oaxaca Housing Units are Full of Functional Flow first appeared on Dornob.

Enter the Community Design Agency (CDA), an architecture and design agency with a vision to create “an inclusive world where every human enjoys access to vibrant, safe, and healthy spaces to live, work, and play.”

An initiative of the Curry Stone Design Collective, the sustainably-minded CDA recently worked with both the Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation and non-profit group Snhalaya on a project meant to revitalize the housing blocks in the city of Ahmednagar, India. The city’s Sanjaynagar neighborhood in particular is plagued by subpar living conditions, including homes built from unsuitable reclaimed materials like scrap metal and a lack of adequate sanitation facilities.

The community’s residents directly contributed to the design of the buildings’ interiors. As CDA Managing Director Sandhya Naidu Janardhan explains, the overall process “evolved at different scales of the neighborhood [from] the masterplan…[to] each family designing their apartment interiors.” The result is an “apartment typology [that] allows for multiple combinations and iterations based on the preference of families.”

The new housing will literally transform the area, creating a vibrant multipurpose living space that continues the neighborhood’s community-minded ethos. Built with locally-made bricks and understated decorative features, the units are so much more than the cookie-cutter constructions commonly associated with affordable housing. And the residents’ input did prove to be invaluable, as their requests for good lighting, ventilation, and adequate space for their families, pets, and livestock helped the designers envision a space where real people could live, work, and thrive.

Over 30 families have already moved into the completed homes, but they’ll eventually house almost 300 families, with construction of the remaining homes beginning in November 2022. With the completion of the development, Sanjaynagar will be one step closer to becoming a vibrant and affordable place for the locals to call home.

The post CDA Revitalizes Indian Neighborhood with Resident-Designed Community Housing first appeared on Dornob.

Joining forces with renowned architect Masayuki Sono, winner of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, Serendix and Sono designed a small house that could be printed quickly enough to serve as emergency housing after a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane that destroys the population’s homes.

“The skeleton weighed about 20 tons, and its assembly was completed in 3 hours,” Serendix said in a press release. “Housing construction such as waterproofing and openings was completed in just 23 hours and 12 minutes.”

While the assembly time doesn’t include installation of windows, doors, or interior features, these can be prefabricated and added on site within a few extra hours, allowing these “instant homes” to provide temporary shelter for disaster victims in as little as a day after a catastrophe hits.

The entire pod costs just 3 million yen, or roughly $25,000 USD, to construct thanks to the lack of human labor required. “Using a 3D printer and advanced robotics, we are working on a design that only works with robots and uses as little human hand [input] as possible,” the firm explains.

The home’s distinctive shape was chosen because of its large surface area-to-volume ratio and for its high structural stability. The Sphere is fashioned from 12 identical base segments cut from a cylinder. The pieces are then assembled into a single cocoon-like form. The result is a pod that can look round, square, or hexagonal depending on the particular vantage point.

“This creates a dynamic effect as if it is constantly changing its profile as people walk around the structure,” the firm says. “When multiple units are installed in a cluster such as in the case of cottage or camping ground, this provides diversity and avoids the next house from looking monotonous while maintaining a consistent design vocabulary.”

With its rib-reinforced double shell structure, the 3D-printed dwelling meets both European heat insulation performance standards and Japanese seismic operation requirements. And because it’s made up of separate but easily conjoined parts, the Sphere can be manufactured either onsite or pre-printed as needed. “The goal is to print each unit on ite for highest efficiency,” Serendix says on its website. “Due to identical base geometry of all [pieces] it can also be pre-printed in a controlled factory environment and assembled onsite in case the site condition limits use of in situ printing.”

The 3D-printed structure can also easily be customized for multiple uses. The “window locations can be flexibly adjusted and even the entire base model can be rotated in [a] vertical orientation to achieve variations in design and form.” This could include vaulted, domed, and pitched roof profiles. Multiple units can also be connected to create larger spaces for bigger families or community groups.

Serendix reports that it has already printed its first full-scale prototypes on two different continents and assembled a proof-of-concept unit in Japan. The firm is further improving the fabrication process for upgraded models.

The post This 3D-Printed Housing Pod Can Be Built in Under a Day for Less than the Price of a Car first appeared on Dornob.

The already distinctively difficult market has become even more complicated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people have had to evaluate how they both live and work by either working from home or incorporating a hybrid home/work schedule. So where does this leave young professionals looking for affordable housing?

While the answer is complex, there are some developers looking to create affordable solutions when it comes to finding a place to call home.

Enter French developer Bouyges Immobilier, who launched a co-living company last year to create a new template for how “we rent, use, and share living spaces.” Pairing with the Paris-based architecture studio Cutwork, Immobilier’s aim is deceptively simple: an interior design concept that gives “working people, between 25 to 40 years old, [access to] high-quality, affordable living and a socially connected life…” But how does this lofty goal translate in real life?

To find the answer, look to LEGO.

Currently on display in Paris, the 26-square-meter PolyRoom prototype prefab unit is the ultimate building block creation translated into real-life housing. Designed to stack like LEGO bricks, the prefab modules are built using conventional construction methods — but instead of your standard cookie-cutter apartment units, these units are composed with residents’ ever-changing needs in mind, offering unique spaces to live, work, and adapt. To accomplish this, the modules were modeled to be literally transformative, equipped with movable furniture and clever storage solutions that maximize the living space and its potential for adaptation.

Based on the Japanese concept of washitsu, Cutwork co-founder and architect Antonin Yuji Maeno envisioned spaces that were multipurpose and flexible. He says, “It’s no longer about the amount of square meters [physical living space] we live in but about living in polyvalent spaces that are designed to be reconfigured to fit all our intimate and social needs.”

The bottom line? Residents have a home space that’s in flux and adaptable (yet comfortable), with plenty of options for living their best hybrid work/home lives. Plus, these prefab units can be created more quickly than more traditional building methods, stacking up like LEGO bricks into ready-to-move-in spots that hope to make their mark in the affordable housing sphere.

And just because the units act on the same principle as LEGO bricks doesn’t mean they’ll be dull, drab, and like those dreaded office cubicles stacked on end. Instead, Cutwork hopes to incorporate eco-friendly touches like balconies, facades, and rooftops full of native plants — lush, green spaces that interact with the local ecosystem instead of solely disrupting it. Hoping to open at least 15 of these sites by 2025 (that’s 2,500 PolyRoom bedrooms!), Bouyges Immobilier is ready to impress with these prefab beauties that are transformable and economical, efficient and eco-friendly.

The post These Stackable LEGO-Like Prefab Apartments Reinvent Affordable Housing first appeared on Dornob.

Considering that the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation since 1968, what’s the average resident to do? An unprecedented number of unhoused people have no choice but to sleep on the streets. While some city governments are simply sweeping the houseless population from one park to the next like a game of whack-a-mole, groups like DignityMoves are focusing on building communities of tiny homes as a temporary measure until more permanent housing can be secured.

DignityMoves announced two inaugural communities in San Francisco and Santa Barbara last month, which cost about $30,000 per room (including all communal spaces) and took just a few months to build. Architecture firm Gensler joined tiny home builder Boss Homes to design prefabricated panel systems that could be assembled on sites secured by DignityMoves – typically vacant land or sparkling lots. Each project offers 70 rooms as well as shared bathroom and shower facilities, dining buildings, computer labs, clinics, and community spaces. The 33 Gough Street community in San Francisco has already begun welcoming residents.

“Central to DignityMoves’ vision is that everyone receives a private room with a door that locks,” the group explained in a press release. “Many experiencing homelessness are reluctant to accept beds in traditional group shelters. DignityMoves believes offering this sense of security will make clients more willing to engage in the critical supportive services needed to address the barriers to stable housing. One resident shared, ‘When I was living in my tent, I felt like I was constantly in survival mode, worried about my safety and where I might find my next meal. Now I am warm and dry and can lock my door at night.’”

These temporary, portable tiny homes are designed to last about 20 years. For structures that need a longer lifespan, DignityMoves partners with other manufacturers like Connect Homes, who built a 60-room community on city-owned land in the city of Rohnert Park. The group also collaborates with local agencies who provide supportive services like case management, mental and behavioral healthcare, job placement, and housing placement support. Private philanthropy and impact investors provide the funding.

San Francisco’s tiny home village will replace a city-sanctioned “safe sleeping village” full of tents. Though not exactly luxurious, the tiny houses are certainly an improvement over fabric shelters, especially in winter.

Crucially, DignityMoves sees them as just one tool in a toolkit for addressing homelessness; they’re not an all-in-one solution. What comes next is much more important. Organizers need only look to the spectacular failure of another recent attempt at offering temporary-to-permanent shelter to see why.

After authorities cleared an encampment at Echo Park in Los Angeles and provided transitional housing under a state program called Project Roomkey, only 17 people received long-term housing out of 183 displaced campers. Some of those people reported being placed in a prison-like environment with strict curfews, no-visitor policies, and requirements that they come with no personal belongings. Some rules, like mandatory daily room checks, made it hard for people to find work. Some got kicked out, some chose to leave, and only a few ever received housing vouchers. Those who did reported being unable to find landlords who would take them.

Ultimately, the project demonstrates that automatically treating unhoused people like criminals isn’t the answer to the homelessness crisis. Housing needs to be more affordable for everyone, and achieving that is going to require massive systemic changes in the way we monetize real estate, compensate employees, and structure wealth in this country.

The post Can a New Tiny Home Village Help Address California’s Homelessness Crisis? first appeared on Dornob.

Located in the mountainous highlands near Lake Sevan, a close stretch to the capital city of Yerevan, Gagarin Valley is an innovative vision of a “future-proof landscape.” The architects and their partners imagine a patchwork of residences, gardens, a market hall, a center for the arts, a commercial center, and a sunken stadium for 4,500 visitors built around a spherical educational agriculture center that will serve as the heart of the valley.

The new homes will be stacked around the center to form vertical villages, while the valley’s existing farmhouses will be preserved or transformed into new buildings to reduce waste. Many of the new structures will be topped with green roofs featuring a rainbow of vibrant flowering plants, creating a patchwork effect when viewed from above.

“The area is named after Yuri Gagarin, who was the first human to orbit the earth; he saw the planet’s vulnerability, a house in need of extra care, as many other astronauts have since stressed,” says MVRDV founder Winy Maas. “I share that concern: stimulating biodiversity, improving water management, and the ecosystem is of great importance for the future of the Gagarin Valley and the world. The valley can be seen as a series of test fields for the 10,000 species that will soon flourish there, an enrichment that will give the area the appearance of a garden of Eden.”

“We designed a sphere that acts as a mini-planet, where the classrooms surround a spherical void and where all the species of the valley and beyond are shown and monitored,” Maas says of the agricultural center. “The sphere will be surrounded by a Central Park that contains all the species – a scientific arboretum, reflected in the mirroring sphere. Gagarin would have loved it, I think.”

The current mosaic of 10,000 plots and the roads that connect them will serve as the basis of the new masterplan. The boundaries between the plots will be lined with canals, public paths, and greenery to reduce evaporation and enhance water buffers and biodiversity. Walking and cycling paths will also weave through the valley, and the canal system will be connected to the Hrazdan River.

By offering the amenities of city life enhanced by gorgeous natural scenery, beautifully planted parks, and many opportunities to walk, bike, and ride horses, MVRDV and DAR Foundation hope to attract not just millions of eco-tourists each year, but also young people who want to live in the valley full-time. Work is expected to begin on the project sometime later in 2022.

The post Named After an Astronaut, MVRDV’s Gagarin Valley Masterplan is a Future-Proof Paradise first appeared on Dornob.

Architecture firm Archimatika threw convention out the window with Comfort Town Housing, a low-budget residential development in Kyiv, Ukraine. The project’s vivid rainbow of shades dominated by punchy yellows and oranges enlivens an area of town encompassing several city blocks, almost creating a city-within-a-city with its own unique look and feel. It’s divided into two zones: one with streets that allow for motor vehicle traffic, and one with pedestrian-only courtyards, which feature playgrounds, benches, and walkways.

In some areas, the rooflines of the buildings connect in zig-zagging patterns, while other buildings take on elongated gabled shapes with flat facades. Between the colors and the shapes, the development almost looks like a LEGO city from above, adding to the fun (or the weirdness, depending on your perspective). The architects wanted to create three distinct silhouettes with different turns and heights of dual-pitch roofs for an overall effect that’s varied and interesting.

On some facades, they’ve used French balconies to add decorative flair and function. These are the railings attached to the facade that enable double doors to be opened inside rather than spaces you step out onto. Shifting the patterns of the windows also keeps the buildings from looking monotonous.

“The Comfort Town residential complex includes the Academy of Modern Education with a 160-seat kindergarten, a 140-seat elementary school, and a 600-seat high school,” says Archimatika. “The residential complex also includes a 4500-square-meter retail complex with a supermarket, a 4600-square-meter fitness complex with three swimming pools and gyms, a 1.5-hectare complex of outdoor sports grounds, cafés, stores, and offices on the lower floors of the apartment buildings, 22 children playgrounds, and its own maintenance service.”

The firm adds that “a different number of stories of adjacent buildings (ranging from two to 16 floors) forms a picturesque image of every street. There is also a restored park with perennial trees, sculptures, and a fountain. Thus, the former industrial territory has turned into a good living environment and the status of the district as a whole has increased.”

Though unusual for Kyiv, the development isn’t too out of place, and it feels like a vibrant and comfortable place to live, hence the name. All the pains the architects took to give Comfort Town its cheerful, fun, and artsy atmosphere certainly pay off, especially when you compare it to the depressing uniformity of similarly-sized housing projects in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

The post Comfort Town: Colorful Ukraine Housing Development Looks Like a LEGO Village first appeared on Dornob.

While the U.S. housing market has only gotten hotter as of late, in Japan negative population growth, combined with mass migration to urban areas, has created a housing vacuum, resulting in a rural vacancy rate of approximately 16 percent, according to a May 2021 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

According to Japan’s most recent Housing and Land Survey from 2018, the result of this rural vacancy rate is about 8.49 million akiya — perfectly normal rural homes that exist in empty neighborhoods often referred to as “ghost villages.”

Local governments have been trying to incentivize buying these properties in order to boost rural populations. Officials believe that repopulation efforts (such as the low price tag) will ultimately help to revitalize these rural areas and eventually lead to a possible national economic boon. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga began his term in office with an urgent mandate seeking to bridge the country’s urban-rural divide. Subsequently, many regional areas are responding by offering everything from subsidies for home renovations to tax breaks for those who purchase akiya.

Recently, another strategy has been applied to entice akiya buyers: “akiya banks.” These are real estate websites that exclusively offer these ghost village homes in specific communities for rock bottom prices. The project has proven hugely successful in places like the country’s Wakayama prefecture, where about a third of the region’s available homes have been sold since 2015. The listings on Wakayama’s akiya bank have ranged anywhere from $800 on up – a strong selling point for those looking to own a home that isn’t too far from a large city (Osaka).

Granted, many of these abandoned homes are what we in the U.S. would deem as “fixer-uppers,” a prospect that does’t necessarily appeal to many young Japanese people. Douglas Sutherland, the senior economist for Japan at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, feels that the failure of the akiya program could be due to “generally less interest in DIY home renovations [here] than there are in the U.S.” This translates to these properties not being worth the time or money, making them a less than hot commodity for young professionals.

And this could be true, as renovation costs (outside of those subsidized by the government) could get expensive quick — especially since the houses would most likely have to be brought up to code. Additionally, the property rights in Japan make it extremely difficult to simply knock down the akiya and start from scratch, as the potential buyer would still need approval from the “technical homeowner.” Obstacles like these are just another reason why these homes are continuing to sit vacant, unable to be knocked down but impossible to renovate without an excess of funds.

In the future, the Japanese government may choose to amend some of these legal obstructions in an effort to make the akiya even more desirable to buyers. Until then, these abandoned homes will continue to sit vacant in their ghost villages – at least until the right buyer comes along and is swayed by the prospect of owning a too-good-to-be-true $500 home.

The post These Houses in Rural Japan are on Sale for Just $500 first appeared on Dornob.

Thousands of designers and firms around the world participated, producing a dazzling array of proposals in four categories: environment, health, society, and work. They range from fun and lighthearted distance-encouraging wearables for kids to inclusive sustainable villages and everything in between. We’ve gathered 10 of our favorites here, and you can see the rest at the Biennale’s official website:

Homes for All by Saorla Hanley

For designer Saorla Hanley, the pandemic demonstrated a dire need for a push in building social housing in the United Kingdom. She proposes wheelchair-accessible housing for a small brownfield site in Greenhill, Harrow, England that can serve the diverse population, including large families with multiple generations. The four-bedroom houses are centered around a communal garden.

Inclusiveness by Design by Shiro Muchiri

Shiro Muchiri calls on the design community to find ways to introduce diverse socioeconomic groups to each other through design work and projects. “I believe that a more dynamic and active platform for idea sharing and collaborations should be created. Making the process of transforming great ideas into reality faster, more effective, and inclusive,” he says, adding that “we should form a type of institution or organization that can bring together brilliant ideas, extraordinary skills, advanced technology, and technical know-how to a central hub. A hub where design professionals can reach out to each other as a resource that can enable them to put together, showcase, and bring into our living spaces, workplaces, homes and other living environments, worldwide artistry, skills, and craft.”

Active Classroom by Boris Lancelot Tichelman

A description for this project on the Biennale’s website explains that “the ‘Active Classroom’ is a series of ergonomic children’s furniture designed for the school of the future. As a diverse alternative to the deep and unhealthy habituation in chair sitting, the four stools encourage a frequent alternation of different postures to increase muscular diversity, starting with the youth.”

Pop-Up Ecosystems by Mudd Architects + Airlab

Mudd Architects and Airlab joined up with young designers to propose a series of “Pop-up Ecosystems” that add green spaces to existing buildings to improve mental health. These ultralight spaces mimic proven techniques that have already been deployed in public pavilions and installations, but subvert their usage for growing plants with roots that grip directly onto the fabric as they grow.

Symbiotic Futures by Romy Snijders

Disconnection with nature is a growing problem in many societies around the world, contributing to neglect and destruction of the planet. Designer Romy Snijders believes that we should be learning more about “the language of trees,” learning by way of nature’s example. She says: “We know that trees communicate with each other through a network of mycorrhizal fungi. The designed tools would allow us to listen to this communication and see which trees are connected. Insight in the communication between trees can help us protect the forest and improve environmental health.”

Co-Food by Megana Mikuciauskaite

Most correctional facilities focus more on punishment than reform or restorative justice, perpetuating cycles of crime instead of breaking them. Megana Mikusciauskaite believes we could change the way incarcerated people view their roles in society by nurturing their relationships with their families. “Co-Food” connects inmates with volunteers to learn new skills and share in food-based and gardening projects that their family and friends can also participate in. She adds that “participatory design would attract not only family members, but also different audiences, creating an opportunity for bridging social capital.”

Reclaim Women’s Space by Eva Storrusten

The Biennale website hails this “master project in architecture” as “interpreting the potential architecture of the lost women’s spaces in Old Stone Town, Zanzibar; how can architecture support female empowerment? Through a collaboration with local stakeholders, this project considers women’s position in a Muslim context were there has been a distinct gender separation traditionally.”

Urban Hives by Nathalie Harb

Low-cost elevated modular structures could create new garden spaces in urban areas without having an impact on parking availability. This project enables urban farming, mitigates pollution, and provides open green spaces for smaller communities while also providing shade for cars in parking lots.

Insectology: Food for Buzz by Matilde Boelhouwer

“’Insectology: Food for Buzz’ is a series of artificial ongoing flowering flowers meant to serve as an emergency food source for the ‘big five of pollination.’ Together with engineers and scientists, these five colorful man-made flowers have been developed to be self-sustaining and continuously produce natural objects that form the ultimate attractions to those of the big five.”

WeAlign by Wuqing Hipsh

As we age, it gets harder to find our balance, increasing our risk of falls. WeAlign is a concept for gamified exercise that improves gaze stabilization. Your head movements control the game, ultimately helping your balance improve. Best of all, the program makes physical therapy fun, tracking both qualitative and quantitative data about your progress.

The post 10 Standout Projects from the “Design in an Age of Crisis” Competition first appeared on Dornob.

2020 was a year that made us all reexamine how we define the word “home.” Naturally, architectural research initiative Arch Out Loud’s annual competition exploring the “future of home” was filled with ideas about life in a post-pandemic world, as well as solutions to more traditional concerns like climate change and scarcity of resources. The winners creatively wove their utopian desires into conceptual structures, incorporating everything from work/life balance to bio-hacking and even prison recidivism into their new visions for our most personal sanctuaries.

Overall Winner: Shadow Housing

Invented by Jeffrey Liu and Haylie Chan, “Shadow Housing” embodies the values of communal living while using the sun as a guide for daily work activities.

Pointing out that COVID-19 has ruptured the “boundary between office and the home,” the idea suggests that we no longer need to place an “emphasis on productive labor over unwaged housework.” Instead, Shadow Housing integrates an open-air live/work commons that “tethers the workday to the movement of the sun.” The development is proposed to exist in the amenable climate of Los Angeles, with each unit having a ground floor of two private rooms and enclosed patio rooms, and a shared rooftop living area divided by shadow-casting walls. Those walls would be precisely designed to alternately shade work spaces and domestic labor throughout the day, in the hopes of creating a more balanced 24-hour flow.

The concept certainly makes sense for a coronavirus-ridden world and a few arid, temperate environments, but even in sunny Los Angeles, most people don’t want to be outside until the temperatures are comfortable enough for work. Perhaps the idea could be adapted to a glass-enclosed space to still allow for light and shadow but also climate control?

Innovation Award: Biohackers Residence

This alien-looking dwelling, ideally located in the red rock deserts of Utah, is designed to be a bio-hacker paradise. For all those seeking “self-empowerment” by challenging “what it means to be human,” this commune, conceptualized by Samuel Esses and Jonathan Wong at Superficium, looks like a genetic mutation of the natural landscape. While the inhabitants mingle in the common lounge areas to use the organic 3D printers and CRISPR editing workstations, the craggy, luminous abode will provide shelter from the outside world (and the law) to help them practice self-experimentation and gene-editing.

Adaptabilty Award: Stuyvesanttown

Designer Carla Bonilla Huaroc envisions a New York City in the year 2035, where the “ratio of luxury to affordable housing causes a major recession” leading to former high-end condos like the Stuyvesant development being converted into other housing needs. Bonilla Huaroc predicts “the crisis of homelessness becom[ing] even more dire, and … the consequences of mass incarceration occurring earlier in the millennium becom[ing] more visible.”

Her vision includes transforming the extravagant apartment high-rise into Stuyuvesanttown, a transitional landing pad for citizens returning from incarceration. The brown brick facade features several cutouts filled in with receded but bulbous gray brick innards. The overall effect looks like King Kong swung through punching holes in the top of the building, but perhaps the design is intended to hint at breaking free from an old life and filling it in with a newer, more malleable existence.

The inside of Stuyuvesanttown would consist of both individual apartments and dorm-type rooms, with the aim of helping people “take one of the first steps…to find safe shelter.” There would also be classrooms and office spaces available for non-profits to help residents learn or regain self-sufficiency skills.

Pragmatic Award: House is Not a Home

With this theoretical multi-family dwelling, Qin Ye Chen and Yiwen Wang sought to answer the question “how can architecture offer a remedy to social isolation?” The buildings feature overlapping shared spaces interwoven among the private realms. It would also accommodate the inclusion of different demographics and income groups, with each complex offering a range of low to mid-range residences.

Honorable Mentions

Among the many Honorable Mention awards was “Achiparago,” by Nai-Hua Chen and Eileen Xu, itself a web of urban housing with automated farming levels for more efficient food production. “Bubble” by Sidian Tu is an emergency response to natural disaster and pandemics. With two breathable membranes for structure, the walls themselves form the necessary seating, sleeping, and working furniture. And “Bring Your Home” by Felix Kim, Pui Luk, and Zeb Saiyed would see city parks transformed into mini-Easter Islands, each chock-full of auto-piloted mobile lodgings (resembling the large stone heads from the South Pacific) that are safe for work, travel, and life.

The post 2020 Arch Out Loud Winners Predict the Future of Home Design first appeared on Dornob.

Rosselli’s “The Great Wall of WA” was selected as a finalist in the Australian Institute of Architects Western Australia architecture awards, and won “best housing project” in ArchDaily’s Building of the Year contest in 2016. Despite being highly energy-efficient, earth-sheltered architecture still isn’t very common around the world, even in areas like Pilbara that could really benefit from the extra protection from the heat. This collective housing project demonstrates what a great choice it can be in certain climates and shows off the beauty of rammed earth, to boot.

Designed as guest houses for a 100-year-old family cattle station, the farmer residences that make up the new complex are accented by Cor-Ten steel canopies, matching the roof of an oval chapel that sits upon the new artificial dune overlooking the family cemetery. Each guest house is also stepped to maintain a level of privacy indoors and out, with only the verandahs visible from outside. The awnings keep the sun from penetrating the glass doors to the interiors.

The back end of each guest house tapers down toward an existing building used as a communal meeting area and lounge, which itself features a pergola made of old drilling pipes. The striking chapel, inspired by the Pantheon of Rome, its oriented to the east and pierced by a glass-covered oculus. Sliding curved glass windows can be opened to the air or closed to protect against dust storms.

“With their 450-mm thick rammed earth facade and the sand dune to their rear and forming their roofs, the residences have the best thermal mass available, making them naturally cool in the subtropical climate,” says the firm. “The design of the accommodation represents a new approach to remote North Western Australia architecture, moving away from the sun baked, thin corrugated metal shelters to naturally cooled architectural earth formations.”

“Rammed earth extracted from the local clay pans, pebbles, and gravel quarried from the river bed are the palette of materials that blend into the landscape. Internally, one finds a comfortable environment, cooled by the rammed earth walls and the meter-deep sand hill. The interior design by Sarah Foletta is a restrained, natural, and robust selection of materials and furniture.”

The complex blends beautifully into its scenic setting, and as always, the rammed earth has a stunning striated appearance thanks to the way it’s constructed. Framework, usually made of parallel plywood panels, is filled with a layer of damp earth and compressed to about half of its original volume with a pneumatic tamper. The process is repeated and the forms removed, revealing a strong, naturally pigmented wall.

Though it doesn’t have the best thermal performance on its own, combining rammed earth with earth-sheltering is a sustainable technique making use of abundant local resources and reducing or eliminating the need for mechanical heating and cooling systems.

The post 12 Homes Tucked Into “Great Wall” of Rammed Earth in Australia first appeared on Dornob.

What if we approached urban life from a different perspective? Architectural firm Framlab has envisioned a way to make cities much friendlier to live in with “Open House,” a concept they hope will serve as a prototype for housing that “foregrounds social inclusion, connection, and well-being.” First and foremost, the design addresses what they call the hidden epidemic of social disconnection.

“The home is arguably the most important indoor environment in our lives,” they say. “A home is more than a shelter from the elements, and plays an important role for our social, developmental, and cognitive processes. This space is closely related to our senses of trust, safety, and belonging. However, in most cities today, housing is less treated as a human habitat as it is a financial instrument. While cities around the world are struggling to provide enough housing for their rapidly growing populations, quantity is not the only factor of this housing crisis. We also need adequate housing that can support, nourish, and enrich our social and cultural identity and diversity.”

Arguing that the pursuit of endless growth and the order of consumerism has shifted our focus from relationships to material pursuits, with technology worsening the situation instead of alleviating it, the architects propose adding a generous transition space between the housing environment and the street to maximize potential for social encounters between neighbors. A modular system that could be added onto existing buildings or used to build new developments, the setup creates a “soft edge” that blurs the boundaries between these two spaces, offering seating, planters, bike storage, and social areas that are open to the air but protected from the elements. Private areas outside each residence open onto the shared space, which also features vertical aeroponic gardens automatically misted with collected rainwater.

“These spaces have been accentuated with seating, reading nooks, shelving, and art, and have been given favorable views and lighting conditions to encourage social engagement between neighbors. Studies have found casual encounters to be just as important in fostering a sense of belonging and trust as contact with family and close friends. The apartment entrance area has been given extra attention. Here, the ‘soft edge’ strategy is applied again to create a gradual transition between the common space and the individual units. This also allows each apartment to ‘spill’ into the shared space and express the individual and cultural character of the household. The partition is made up of a retractable wall, enabling the resident to regulate the ‘softness’ of the boundary.”

The result is a “soft extension” of each private unit. Crucially, there’s no forced interaction while performing basic domestic tasks like cooking, as you’d find in communal housing. Residents can choose when and how much to open their own spaces to the semi-private “in-between zone” and make themselves available for socializing. In the end, the modular multi-story semi-outdoor addition offers far more opportunities to meet new people — not to mention a lot more access to nature — compared to the average apartment building.

That’s music to a lot of urban residents’ ears right about now. The pandemic forced many of us into our individual apartments, which lack adequate access to spaces that are safe for socializing. And the additional multi-purpose spaces offered by “Open House” would be beneficial long after our coronavirus vaccines allow us to go back to normal life.

The post Framlab’s “Open House” Fights Loneliness in the City with Pandemic-Safe Building Additions first appeared on Dornob.

The sleek, energy-efficient mini houses, built by California startup company Mighty Buildings, can be manufactured cheaper and faster than traditional prefab homes. Using its ultra-fast 20-foot-tall 3D printer, Mighty Buildings produces the components of a 350-square-foot lodging in just 24 hours.

Of course, this is not the first business to print 3D houses. Austin-based Icon built an entire 3D neighborhood in Mexico last year, and European company Kamp C recently constructed the world’s largest 3D printed home in Belgium. What makes the Oakland-based Mighty Buildings unique is its ability to produce so many more elements than other enterprises. It prints not only the walls of its homes, but also the floors, ceilings, roofs, and overhangs, automating up to 80 percent of the building products (with the windows, plumbing, and electrical installed later on-site).

The company, a graduate of Y Combinator’s tech accelerator, also uses its own proprietary 3D printing substance, Light Stone Material (LSN), which hardens almost instantly when exposed to UV light. “It literally freezes in air,” says Slava Solonitsyn, Mighty Builders CEO and co-founder. The company also claims that LSN is four times lighter than concrete, not to mention resistant to heat, fire, and water damage.

Mighty Buildings currently specializes in accessory dwelling units (ADUs) ideal for backyard guest houses, with six models ranging from studios to three-bedrooms. Constructed in the warehouse, the small homes are then shipped to location and placed by crane. Finally, contractors take a few days to install the interior finishes. To date, Mighty Builders has installed two accessory ADUs, one in San Diego and the other in San Ramon, California, with another 15 units currently under contract. Due to permitting issues, the finished houses have traditional roofs for now, but the company expects to be able to fully print homes starting in 2021.

These printed residences start at $115,000, and while not bargain-basement priced, the one-bedroom/one-bathroom unit in San Diego cost roughly $314 per square foot, lower than the state’s $327 average. Mighty Builders says buyers could realize savings of up to 45 percent over comparable houses in the nation’s higher-priced real estate markets.

The cost savings from these 3D-printed abodes comes mostly from a reduction in labor needs. The company’s production techniques require 95 percent fewer man-power hours than conventional builds, a change that could potentially transform the construction industry. Even things like pouring insulation are done robotically in the printing process.

Best of all, the prefab houses are also environmentally friendly. “From a sustainability standpoint, by being able to print the roof and the floors as well as the walls, it allows us to create monolithic shells that increase the airtightness, reduce the thermal leakage, and increase the overall energy efficiency of the structure, making it really easy to meet California zero net energy standards,” says Sam Ruben, Mighty Buildings Chief Sustainability Officer and co-founder. “We can even go past that into Passive House and other standards that are on the cutting edge of what energy efficiency can do.”

Additionally, the edifices reduce waste by employing fewer materials. Mighty Buildings walls require just one material where a standard wall could be made up of almost a dozen.

Currently only available in California, Mighty Buildings is working with developers to expand their operations and get their 3D printed homes in urban areas all across the US.

The post California Startup 3D Prints Homes in Just 24 Hours first appeared on Dornob.

You’re not just imagining it — urban architecture has gotten a lot more uncomfortable lately, and not by accident. So-called “defensive architecture,” also known as “hostile architecture,” is a real design strategy that aims to displace homeless people in public places all over the world.

Seats are slanted too steeply to sit for long. Benches have armrests dividing up the space, so it’s impossible to lay down. In some cases, seating is removed altogether from entire city blocks, or locked up to be unusable at night. Steps outside stores are studded with spikes and bolts. Boulders and other obstacles appear in the only shaded areas where someone could pause and rest out of the hot summer sun. Even handrails get spikes of their own, ostensibly to thwart skateboarders. Awnings have subtle gaps built in so if you hang around too long, you’ll eventually get wet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/comments/d2gxn5/benches_in_a_philadelphia_subway_station/

There’s an entire bustling subReddit devoted to finding and photographing this kind of design, making it clear just how prevalent it’s become. In Toronto, the #defensiveTO project maps each instance out with accompanying images. Some attempt to be artful, masquerading as sculpture, like the metal benches installed at the South Philadelphia Transit Authority. Most are plain about what they mean to accomplish, practically glowing with hostility.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/comments/dkgvyc/this_bench_in_oxford/

https://www.reddit.com/r/HostileArchitecture/comments/ddaogt/how_dare_you_want_to_sit_manhattan_new_york/

All over the world, features like these have been installed in response to a rise in homelessness. Proponents of hostile architecture claim that it’s necessary to maintain public safety, discouraging loitering or “rough sleeping.” As the argument goes, customers shouldn’t have to look at such distasteful signs of poverty while attempting to patronize businesses, and loiterers are associated with crime.

https://twitter.com/SeattleDSA/status/949731164356411392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E949731164356411392%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finterestingengineering.com%2F15-examples-anti-homeless-hostile-architecture-that-you-probably-never-noticed-before

https://twitter.com/CaraChellew/status/994945838190288904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E994945838190288904%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finterestingengineering.com%2F15-examples-anti-homeless-hostile-architecture-that-you-probably-never-noticed-before

Of course, homeless people aren’t the only ones affected by hostile architecture. Everyone who lives in or visits the city has to see and deal with it, including disabled, pregnant, and elderly people. Then there’s the casual cruelty of installing such features in the first place while completely failing to address the root causes of homelessness, asking people to go “somewhere else” without ever thinking about where that “somewhere else” is supposed to be.

COVID-19’s effect on the economy has given more people a sense of just how thin the line can be between “getting by” and having nowhere to live, especially as housing becomes increasingly less affordable. Homelessness has increased on a national level in the United States for three consecutive years, with hundreds of thousands of people lacking shelter altogether. Even worse, that figure is only expected to rise in 2021.

Public spaces should accommodate the public — and that means everyone. They should make us feel appreciated and supported as citizens. They should encourage us to linger, enjoy our surroundings and interact with each other. When urban environments fail to meet these basic needs, they’re also altering the mood of the entire city, making it more cynical, unfriendly, and just plain ugly.

Hostile architecture isn’t a design problem. It won’t be corrected by asking designers to twist themselves into pretzels to produce public spaces that are somehow equitable, attractive, social, and also aggressively unwelcoming to people who are seen as undesirable. It has to be addressed on a social and political level, starting with our own individual actions. If you’re disturbed by increasingly hostile urban design in your area, call it out publicly and hold your local authorities accountable for change.

Top image by u/supremecrafters via r/HostileArchitecture

The post No Defense: How Hostile Anti-Homeless Design Darkens Our Cities first appeared on Dornob.