DESIGN STUDIO, 2011
This project is fundamentally a critique to current practices of residential planning. Inflexibility and banality in housing design, short sightedness in town development that build only to cater instant need has causes issues including blind densification in Melbourne CBD and housing glut in the growing fringe suburbs. Furthermore, the fixated house planning has forces us to live nomadically, as one faces growth or inevitable changes in life such as marriage, having children and aging.
Questions such as “Could there be an alternative to this residential planning myopia?” “ How can an apartment be a permanent ‘home’?” were asked.
The value of this project is experimenting with modularity and kit-of- parts to provide flexibility that caters the changing need of the society and individuals. In urban scale, detachable pods can be installed and removed to render the project with adaptability to accommodate needs in facilities that comes with development of North Melbourne. On an individual scale, extension pods of 1.5m and 3m module can be attached or detached according to preference and need, to basic apartment units of 3 dwelling typologies – single floor, south facing and north facing duplex, designed based on 6.3mx 8.4m structural grid. In the light of adaptability, internal partition are segregated from its load bearing structure and services running along structural walls, to allow adaptability in space transformation and possibility of joining adjacent units.
