Arch 428-Housing Paper
Housing in Europe seems to defy categorization; however I am going to attempt just that in order to try to make sense of all of the things that I saw. I would say that the main housing types that I saw were the block, the tower, row housing, courtyard housing and what I will call core housing. Although all of these types have there own varieties and subtypes I will broadly define them here. Block housing refers to long, tall narrow volumes with either double or single loaded corridors. I found this typology to be the most common in Germany and in the Netherlands. Tower housing consists of tall, upwards of twenty stories, square buildings centered around a large central mechanical and circulation core with units on all sides. These were especially prevalent in Italy and Spain. Row housing is typically narrow, 3-5 stories tall and is generally smaller in character, likely built for a single family and having just a few units. Courtyard housing can be either C-shaped housing wrapped around an open courtyard or larger square shaped buildings with an open courtyard on the center. This seemed to be most prevalent in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and some parts of Spain. Central core housing is made up of very compactly built buildings similar to row housing but distinguished by having mixed use ground floors. These were typically older and could be found in the urban core of almost all the cities that we visited. Other notable but less significant typologies were canal houses, a variation of row houses found in the Netherlands, student housing and what I will call the mini-block present a smaller scale, more clustered approach, 3-5 stories tall with approximately 2-4 units per floor. One particularly interesting hybrid manifestation of these types was the housing for the upper class in Barcelona. Located in Cerga’s grid, in which each block centers around a central courtyard, this typology adds large central light wells and servants’ quarters. In the case of Casa Mila, and a project by Ferrater these central courtyards provided light deep within the buildings and the servants quarters were often clustered around them to provide emergency escape windows deep within the large floor plate. It was interesting to learn upon visiting the contemporary firm of Carlos Ferrater that this was not considered an outdated relic of Gaudi’s time, as is seen in the Casa Mila and Casa Batlio, but it was still being constructed today.
One way housing differs is the way in which it is entered. This can be split up into public, semi-public, and private realms. For example in housing blocks there were usually several vertical circulation corridors distributed along the length of the block. These were usually accessed by a long corridor from the street, between ground floor retail spaces. In some cases, such as less dense areas the ground floor was left open as a kind of lobby and space for uses such as bicycle parking. These paths to the vertical circulation were often controlled by a key/door buzzer system, making them into semi-public space, however sometimes they were left open and were essentially public space. The same was generally true of tower housing typologies, however, in the more suburban areas, especially in Spain these were also commonly accessed from underground parking areas. In row houses the entrances were often removed from the street level by a short stairway but the units are almost always accessed individually, as well as providing individual vertical circulation for every unit. Courtyard housing had small public lobbies with vertical circulation, often the hallways to the units were separated from the stairway creating a semi-private space shared by a few units. Sometimes in a courtyard house there would be a passage from the street into the courtyard with the vertical circulation and entrances centered in the courtyard.
One particularly interesting solution I found was in some family/grad housing at the University of Utrecht. Here there was a central elevated public spine above some shared spaces such as storage, bike parking and laundry facilities. On one side of the spine there were perpendicular bars of row housing, with a one level unit stacked above two level units, each accessed from a single loaded exterior corridor. These corridors were separated from the circulation spine by a freestanding locked door and buzzer system. This allowed for a semiprivate, more secure access to units while preserving the feel of individual row house entries. On the other side of the circulation spine was a parallel bar of stacked single floor units, which were separated from the spine by bridges with vertical circulation towers placed on them. Access to go up the stairs, or through to the other side of the bridge was similarly restricted. This allowed for a secure separation from the circulation without the visual separation, as there was just a small “moat” to separate the two spaces.
Another important issue in housing is how to deal with the distribution of daylight and therefore the massing of the building/buildings. This can mean the difference between humane large scale housing and “filing cabinets” for people. In block style housing this is dealt with by opening up one full wall of every unit, often with an accompanying small outdoor balcony. The narrow nature of these buildings for the most part allows light to penetrate into the units. The major problem with this typology arises on the inside, in the long dark corridors placed down the center of the building. One interesting solution to this problem is to completely eliminate the corridor, as Le Corbusier does in his la Clarete housing in Geneva. By wrapping units around regularly spaced circulation shafts with full skylights he removed the problem of the corridor. Corbu also opened up his units by making some of them double height to further allow light to penetrate into the narrow floor plates.
In the tower typology the problem of light is dealt with in what I think is a less than ideal manner. All of the circulation and mechanical space is tucked away in the center of the tower, leaving all of the exterior walls open to allow in light. However this makes for a great inequality of light for the occupants on different sides of the building. This is compounded by the fact that these towers are often lumped closely together with sometimes only the width of a narrow street between them. Because of the height and spacing of these towers the amount of light reaching a north facing unit near the bottom of the tower may be very small.
Courtyards are used to bring light into both row housing as well as the courtyard typology. In row housing this allows for a much deeper building and makes up for the narrowness and lack of windows on the two side walls. In courtyard housing the central courtyard either allows for units with light on two sides or allows for front and rear facing units and thus higher densities for the amount of street frontage. These types of housing tend to be older than either block or tower typologies, and they often predate electrical lighting. They therefore tend to have higher ceilings, up to 12-15 ft tall to allow for high clerestory windows to bring light deeper into space that couldn’t otherwise be lit.
Another idea which seems to be gaining ground in newer developments is the idea of cluster housing. In this massing scheme smaller floor plates and smaller buildings (around 5 stories), are grouped together in either circular or perhaps checkerboard layouts to allow light to reach more of the units. An example of this kind of layout was the Olympic village in Turino where a checkerboard arrangement created open public spaces around the buildings in an attempt to foster community among the athletes. Unfortunately, the village was being “decommissioned” during the time that we were in Turino and therefore wasn’t occupied, so it is hard to say how effective this strategy is. I saw a similar layout used in Frankfurt along the river Main which allowed for more porous access through the development to the riverfront park than larger buildings would have.
The predominant form of housing in a given era is a complex product of that era’s current social, economic, and political factors, among other influences. While it is easy to sort out housing into old and new it is much harder to discover the true reasons for the forms of housing in a given place or era. With my limited knowledge of the history of these European countries I will briefly attempt to speculate on the development of the housing there. Obviously, early housing in the core of cities grew as the cities themselves did, and for the most part these buildings are small, compact and very organic, adapting to the irregular street grids and intricacies of their climate and location. A large portion of these were built by merchants and other well to do businessmen above their stores or offices. It is not until the industrial revolution and the movement of people to the cities that the problem of housing large amounts of people begins to occur. The industrial revolution begins to produce housing as a business, creating tenements and hotels, for example much of the buildings in central Paris fit this type, as Paris was among the first industrialized cities. These buildings loose their connection with the local environment and traditional building techniques in favor of imitating popular styles. The Weisenhofsiedlung is an enlightened proposal for how to deal with this new era of production and materials, it begins to take advantage of steel construction, as well as electric lighting. The promise shown here was soon ended by the rise of socialism which in the end tried to bring new efficiencies demanded by state sponsored and subsidized housing. This resulted in the block housing visible in East Berlin and the mid century tower housing that dominates Italy and Spain. It seems that only very recently have these influences begun to break down, if only in the more progressive countries. In the Netherlands for example there seems to be a willingness to mesh and warp typologies, twisting a housing block into a circle to create a courtyard for example. MVRDV re-imagines the block typology in the WoCoZo housing by breaking volumes free of the narrow rectangular block.
Barcelona makes an interesting case study for the change in housing over time. Beginning in the organic, dense, old city with smaller individually built buildings pilled one upon each other, and later moving to Cerga’s grid and the predominant courtyards that it creates. Farther east between the Torre Agbar and the new Forum is a whole series of Franco era towers, some of which are already being torn down. The current era seems to split between new towers that are more varied in form and materials and a kind of “new urbanism” promoted by EMBT. In their housing around the Santa Catriana Market EMBT updates, renovates, and grafts new unique housing into the old.
In the Netherlands and especially in Germany there seems to be a trend toward making housing more sustainable, whether incorporating solar panels and dealing with proper orientation, using double skins and exterior shading devices, or by transforming old underutilized buildings into new homes. I think that this is where there is the most potential for new ideas and new forms to take place, and it is therefore a likely candidate for my thesis exploration. I think that some of the most important things I observed are also some of the most basic, which for some reason do not get a chance to happen in America. It was obvious to me that there is a need for variety of housing in all places, housing shouldn’t be separated by demographics into places for singles or families, young versus old. Diversity isn’t fostered in subdivisions where every house looks the same but are even differentiated into neighborhoods based on price variations of as little as ten thousand dollars. This variety also seems to allow multiple generations of people to grow up in the same place and create community.
Housing should be pedestrian and transit oriented, not only to be more sustainable but to create the opportunities for chance meetings, not the isolation of private vehicles. It also seems to be more economically profitable as pedestrians are much more likely to take a second to stop and buy something or grab a bite to eat. All of these needs also require density, which in America seems to be cursed as a bad thing. In the Netherlands however because of the density of cities and even small communities one could ride a train out of even the biggest cities in less than ten minutes, this seemed to be a much better use of open space than dividing it up into half-acre parcels that no one really gets to enjoy. Another interesting product of higher density living is that it creates the need for large public open spaces, which seem to be a forgotten idea in America. These spaces seem to get much greater amounts of use than the average suburban backyard, and help to create and define a sense of place. The most successful housing that I saw also seemed to be of smaller scales, rather than massive towers or housing blocks. I think in America we still have the room to allow building at these scales which would still be of much higher densities than current developments. I would like to incorporate these kinds of ideas into my future work, as well as much simpler ideas such as higher ceilings to allow in more light. I particularly think that the opportunities offered by courtyard spaces have yet to be fully explored. I would also like to explore the use of exterior shading devices to further refine our buildings. It is more evident to me now than ever before that housing needs to be designed and judged successful on more factors than just economic gain, housing can and should do so much more if we are willing to try new ideas.
One way housing differs is the way in which it is entered. This can be split up into public, semi-public, and private realms. For example in housing blocks there were usually several vertical circulation corridors distributed along the length of the block. These were usually accessed by a long corridor from the street, between ground floor retail spaces. In some cases, such as less dense areas the ground floor was left open as a kind of lobby and space for uses such as bicycle parking. These paths to the vertical circulation were often controlled by a key/door buzzer system, making them into semi-public space, however sometimes they were left open and were essentially public space. The same was generally true of tower housing typologies, however, in the more suburban areas, especially in Spain these were also commonly accessed from underground parking areas. In row houses the entrances were often removed from the street level by a short stairway but the units are almost always accessed individually, as well as providing individual vertical circulation for every unit. Courtyard housing had small public lobbies with vertical circulation, often the hallways to the units were separated from the stairway creating a semi-private space shared by a few units. Sometimes in a courtyard house there would be a passage from the street into the courtyard with the vertical circulation and entrances centered in the courtyard.
One particularly interesting solution I found was in some family/grad housing at the University of Utrecht. Here there was a central elevated public spine above some shared spaces such as storage, bike parking and laundry facilities. On one side of the spine there were perpendicular bars of row housing, with a one level unit stacked above two level units, each accessed from a single loaded exterior corridor. These corridors were separated from the circulation spine by a freestanding locked door and buzzer system. This allowed for a semiprivate, more secure access to units while preserving the feel of individual row house entries. On the other side of the circulation spine was a parallel bar of stacked single floor units, which were separated from the spine by bridges with vertical circulation towers placed on them. Access to go up the stairs, or through to the other side of the bridge was similarly restricted. This allowed for a secure separation from the circulation without the visual separation, as there was just a small “moat” to separate the two spaces.
Another important issue in housing is how to deal with the distribution of daylight and therefore the massing of the building/buildings. This can mean the difference between humane large scale housing and “filing cabinets” for people. In block style housing this is dealt with by opening up one full wall of every unit, often with an accompanying small outdoor balcony. The narrow nature of these buildings for the most part allows light to penetrate into the units. The major problem with this typology arises on the inside, in the long dark corridors placed down the center of the building. One interesting solution to this problem is to completely eliminate the corridor, as Le Corbusier does in his la Clarete housing in Geneva. By wrapping units around regularly spaced circulation shafts with full skylights he removed the problem of the corridor. Corbu also opened up his units by making some of them double height to further allow light to penetrate into the narrow floor plates.
In the tower typology the problem of light is dealt with in what I think is a less than ideal manner. All of the circulation and mechanical space is tucked away in the center of the tower, leaving all of the exterior walls open to allow in light. However this makes for a great inequality of light for the occupants on different sides of the building. This is compounded by the fact that these towers are often lumped closely together with sometimes only the width of a narrow street between them. Because of the height and spacing of these towers the amount of light reaching a north facing unit near the bottom of the tower may be very small.
Courtyards are used to bring light into both row housing as well as the courtyard typology. In row housing this allows for a much deeper building and makes up for the narrowness and lack of windows on the two side walls. In courtyard housing the central courtyard either allows for units with light on two sides or allows for front and rear facing units and thus higher densities for the amount of street frontage. These types of housing tend to be older than either block or tower typologies, and they often predate electrical lighting. They therefore tend to have higher ceilings, up to 12-15 ft tall to allow for high clerestory windows to bring light deeper into space that couldn’t otherwise be lit.
Another idea which seems to be gaining ground in newer developments is the idea of cluster housing. In this massing scheme smaller floor plates and smaller buildings (around 5 stories), are grouped together in either circular or perhaps checkerboard layouts to allow light to reach more of the units. An example of this kind of layout was the Olympic village in Turino where a checkerboard arrangement created open public spaces around the buildings in an attempt to foster community among the athletes. Unfortunately, the village was being “decommissioned” during the time that we were in Turino and therefore wasn’t occupied, so it is hard to say how effective this strategy is. I saw a similar layout used in Frankfurt along the river Main which allowed for more porous access through the development to the riverfront park than larger buildings would have.
The predominant form of housing in a given era is a complex product of that era’s current social, economic, and political factors, among other influences. While it is easy to sort out housing into old and new it is much harder to discover the true reasons for the forms of housing in a given place or era. With my limited knowledge of the history of these European countries I will briefly attempt to speculate on the development of the housing there. Obviously, early housing in the core of cities grew as the cities themselves did, and for the most part these buildings are small, compact and very organic, adapting to the irregular street grids and intricacies of their climate and location. A large portion of these were built by merchants and other well to do businessmen above their stores or offices. It is not until the industrial revolution and the movement of people to the cities that the problem of housing large amounts of people begins to occur. The industrial revolution begins to produce housing as a business, creating tenements and hotels, for example much of the buildings in central Paris fit this type, as Paris was among the first industrialized cities. These buildings loose their connection with the local environment and traditional building techniques in favor of imitating popular styles. The Weisenhofsiedlung is an enlightened proposal for how to deal with this new era of production and materials, it begins to take advantage of steel construction, as well as electric lighting. The promise shown here was soon ended by the rise of socialism which in the end tried to bring new efficiencies demanded by state sponsored and subsidized housing. This resulted in the block housing visible in East Berlin and the mid century tower housing that dominates Italy and Spain. It seems that only very recently have these influences begun to break down, if only in the more progressive countries. In the Netherlands for example there seems to be a willingness to mesh and warp typologies, twisting a housing block into a circle to create a courtyard for example. MVRDV re-imagines the block typology in the WoCoZo housing by breaking volumes free of the narrow rectangular block.
Barcelona makes an interesting case study for the change in housing over time. Beginning in the organic, dense, old city with smaller individually built buildings pilled one upon each other, and later moving to Cerga’s grid and the predominant courtyards that it creates. Farther east between the Torre Agbar and the new Forum is a whole series of Franco era towers, some of which are already being torn down. The current era seems to split between new towers that are more varied in form and materials and a kind of “new urbanism” promoted by EMBT. In their housing around the Santa Catriana Market EMBT updates, renovates, and grafts new unique housing into the old.
In the Netherlands and especially in Germany there seems to be a trend toward making housing more sustainable, whether incorporating solar panels and dealing with proper orientation, using double skins and exterior shading devices, or by transforming old underutilized buildings into new homes. I think that this is where there is the most potential for new ideas and new forms to take place, and it is therefore a likely candidate for my thesis exploration. I think that some of the most important things I observed are also some of the most basic, which for some reason do not get a chance to happen in America. It was obvious to me that there is a need for variety of housing in all places, housing shouldn’t be separated by demographics into places for singles or families, young versus old. Diversity isn’t fostered in subdivisions where every house looks the same but are even differentiated into neighborhoods based on price variations of as little as ten thousand dollars. This variety also seems to allow multiple generations of people to grow up in the same place and create community.
Housing should be pedestrian and transit oriented, not only to be more sustainable but to create the opportunities for chance meetings, not the isolation of private vehicles. It also seems to be more economically profitable as pedestrians are much more likely to take a second to stop and buy something or grab a bite to eat. All of these needs also require density, which in America seems to be cursed as a bad thing. In the Netherlands however because of the density of cities and even small communities one could ride a train out of even the biggest cities in less than ten minutes, this seemed to be a much better use of open space than dividing it up into half-acre parcels that no one really gets to enjoy. Another interesting product of higher density living is that it creates the need for large public open spaces, which seem to be a forgotten idea in America. These spaces seem to get much greater amounts of use than the average suburban backyard, and help to create and define a sense of place. The most successful housing that I saw also seemed to be of smaller scales, rather than massive towers or housing blocks. I think in America we still have the room to allow building at these scales which would still be of much higher densities than current developments. I would like to incorporate these kinds of ideas into my future work, as well as much simpler ideas such as higher ceilings to allow in more light. I particularly think that the opportunities offered by courtyard spaces have yet to be fully explored. I would also like to explore the use of exterior shading devices to further refine our buildings. It is more evident to me now than ever before that housing needs to be designed and judged successful on more factors than just economic gain, housing can and should do so much more if we are willing to try new ideas.
posted by idiovoyager at 1:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home