I grew up in a city of mostly rowhomes and I love them. Plan on buying one one day.
You still get walk-ability, sense of community and good population density (not as good as a high-rise but still good), but also more privacy, and the space is more conducive to raising a family than an apartment. Also they’re cute as fuck and people can paint them different colors and have cool little gardens on their porches and stuff.
Just curious, because this actually seems like it starts leaning in that direction, but has anyone ever combined the concepts of population dense dwellings with things like gardening space? Like a high rise where every unit has an outdoor area large enough to do real gardening but also space enough inside for a family of four to live in? Or does that become cost-prohibitive really quickly?
Alterlaa is a public housing complex in Austria with a shape that allows for several floors to grow plants on their balconies.
This still falls short of a backyard you’d get with many rowhomes, though. But Alterlaa follows the towers-in-the-park philosophy of urban planning so there’s plenty of outdoor space for families. In a traditional, pre-industrial-style city you’d just have more parks and car-free streets with lots of vegetation. For dense and modern cities, Singapore is working on blending modern urbanism with nature.
Did the Neon Genesis Evangelion artists use this building as reference material?
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that is awesome.
Habitat 67 is another building designed for this sort of thing. The idea was high density but with gardens and a sense of community, and designed around mass-produceable modules that could be configured in a customized way. A lot of people dislike the look because the modular fabrication method used a lot of concrete, but I still think it’s a neat idea, both the original concept and the actual implementation which was trimmed down for budget reasons.
It was intended to produce cost-effective public housing, but since all we have is the prototype that was built for a world fair, there’s a fair bit of history and novelty involved that means the units are fairly expensive these days iirc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67
That seems to just have increased surface area, making thermal issues worse? They look pretty cool, but seem very ineffective for many of the problems with housing, including the overuse of high environmental impact materials like concrete
Just seems like it more of an attempt at modularity with a focus on the least necessary things. Something to learn from, I guess, but not very useful
You are very right. While it looks nice in terms of energy usage it is horrible. Design is also controversial and not ideal imho. Looks fun though.
As art and as a demonstration of the range of what’s possible, it does well. I don’t think it’s meant to be an example of what a common approach should be though.
I like it as art for what could be possible! It’s fun and cool like that. Just not for any utility really
It is important for us to have these things to remind us of what is possible, and to allow a broader range of imagination.
Looks great to me. Thermal properties are an issue though.
Some countries have community gardens for people who don’t have space at their place
Like this one in Zurich
I lived in a place where they tried to do that but TBH because of how things were layout out it wasn’t too nice. Depending how the unit was oriented in relation to the earth and the other buildings. The garden area was either too shaded from nearby buildings/hedges/trees so it wasn’t sunny at all and always kind of dark and damp. Or it was blasted with sun with the little lawns/gardens in competition with tree roots for small amount of rainwater. When there is too much pavement the rainfall mostly washes into the sewers instead of getting to the ground. So people who had their bit of land facing that way could only get it nice by having sprinklers on all the time which sucks.
I think it could be improved with a redesign. Put in trees which will be sustainable in the available land. And stop being so committed to the suburban aesthetic of grass and hedges when the environment doesn’t support it. Maybe add some big planter boxes with good soil. It’s not an unsalvageable situation but it would be a lot of work to make it nice.
I know the architecture group Vandkunsten has done some projects along those lines. They’ve designed a 4-person home with 37 square meters, where the concept is to make use of common space. They generally make very cool use of common space.
Terraced houses that are actually terraced: green roofs that double as balcony yards.