What is Being Subverted?
1 Below-ground living
2 Interior movement
3 Building codes
4 Stairs
5 Garbage and recycling
Nonfiction Case Study Questions
Can rethinking the current parking bylaw make more sites viable for infill housing?
Can less bulky townhouse infill housing provide the same density as mid-rise towers?
Can below-grade housing feel safe and airy?
Can a new housing typology be created for two people who are not a couple?
Can the autonomy and security of an apartment building be created for townhouses?
How can building code loopholes be negotiated?
How much can common interior elements be altered without making them impractical?
Dictation
This project is a real feasibility study for clients who own three houses in a row in a neighbourhood transitioning to medium-density, low-rise apartment buildings. The three houses are atypically close to the lane. The city relaxed the rear yard setback when they were originally built because the lots were not as deep as normal properties in Vancouver. Each of the three houses has a suite, so the only practical reason to replace the houses with a single larger development is if a substantial amount of new housing units could be created. Inspired by the Mixing Middle case study, this project creates the density of a low-rise apartment building within rowhouse massing. DJA’s Pearl Block is a precedent, where units interlock and catch natural light uniquely.
The FSR for a typical low-rise apartment building is 2.25 – 2.5 FSR. This project creates 2.3 FSR. A typical low-rise apartment building sits on top of one to two levels of underground parking. These three sites, even when combined, are too small to fit any underground parking, mostly because of the vehicle ramp’s size. The project expands on our experience with the two multifamily residential projects completed before this DDes research. The parking strategy for this site was inspired by the 4411 Main Street case study. The generic light-duty elevators are located off the lane. These elevators are often seen at car dealerships with more cars than parking spaces.
This proposed design fits 22 households into a property with six. It works within current RM-4 setbacks and stepped massing requirements. This approach means an expensive and time-consuming rezoning application is not required. Like the Mixing Middle case study, all the additional FSR is below the ground plane, so the building’s apparent massing appears to conform to established zoning regulations for neighbours and passersby.
Cities evolve over time and at different rates, but accelerated, bold, or bulky change is uncomfortable for most long-term residents. This case study proposes more diplomatic infill housing, which is hard to see.
Jarring size differences between adjacent buildings in Vancouver’s neighbourhoods are being ignored in a slow frenzy to increase density. This DDes proposes that towers and mid-rise apartments are one answer to housing shortages and urban growth, but there are other options.
This project proposes narrow party wall townhouse units, fitting as many units on the site as practical. All units face the street, with 11 units at or above the sidewalk level, and 11 units below it. This innovative project creates density most would consider impossible for the site while meeting the current parking bylaw. City dwellers walk, bike, or take transit more than suburbanites. In Vancouver, most people’s social, recreational, and community life requires a personal car. When someone new comes to work for DJA from outside Canada, we all wait to see how many months they will live here before they cave and buy a car. Car share services don’t match the privileges of ownership yet. Parking bylaw minimums are relaxed in Vancouver, but for the purposes of this case study, the proposed parking will meet the most typical current parking bylaws for non-single-family zones. This study proposes that, at present, the city’s livability will decrease if more cars are forced to fight for fewer parking spaces.
This project also innovates a new housing unit typology designed for roommates who are not a couple. The Vancouver General Hospital is a few blocks away from this site. Our clients typically have medical professionals as tenants who come to the city for residencies. The below-grade units suit shift workers or people who are active outdoors. Ambient light levels are lower than in grade-level residences but brighter than in a typical Vancouver basement suite. Like other case studies, a large moat separates these lower units from the sidewalk. To avoid filling in the moat with a bridge or sidewalk to each ground floor unit and another stair or ramp to each below-grade, five moveable bridge/stair inventions will each provide access to two grade-level units and two below-grade units. These devices are inspired by escalators that hinge and flatten from stairs to a flat surface. The drawbridges provide added security for each townhouse, addressing some people’s discomfort when their entry door opens directly onto an urban sidewalk. Occupants leaving or guests arriving will press a button to call for the drawbridge, just like calling for an elevator. Each independent segment can lock into place on abstracted green “shrub” dowels supporting stairs and risers to provide access to the lower townhouses. The walkway segments lock into flat positions when the drawbridge is level, with each chamfered segment acting as integral anti-slip grooves.
The benefit of using five drawbridges for 22 townhouses is the net area for plantings or mirrors in the moat increases, creating lush north-facing West Coast fern dells or outdoor spaces at the lower townhouses. Large mirrors borrowed from the Mixing Middle case study are optional for each lower townhouse, directing bright overhead daytime sky deep into their front windows.
Inside the lower townhouses, a pivoting stair with equal rise and run dimensions allows two platonic roommates to feel like they live alone in the unit, claiming the kitchen, dining, and living in shifts. As the stair rotates, it lifts or lowers clothes hanging from a rod welded to the moving stair to be space efficient with the negative space stairs create. By pivoting the stairs, occupants walk on the rise or the run, like a Maurits Cornelis (M.C.) Escher drawing came to life. A small building relaxation is required since the stairs’ rise and run cannot be equal under the current building codes. This project’s stair design was partly inspired by an obscure Fey Two-In-One stair from Missouri in the 1940s. It allowed people to go downstairs from the place where they would normally go upstairs, deleting the necessity for a hall to go around the stairs to walk under it. These units efficiently save space by having no floor area devoted to hallways.
The roommate’s bedroom looks south towards the lane. It has a deep but planted light well, which could also potentially be filled with mirrors from the Mixing Middle case study.
Car lifts off the lane hold two cars, with a void added under the lane’s level so strangers can share a lift. No one would be stuck at home based on whether your elevator-mate is home or not. If you’re the one on top, you would drop the elevator down and back out, lowering your elevator-mate’s car slightly below ground. Cars don’t need as much height as a typical residential interior. This parking structure is slightly like those sliding puzzles with one empty square.
Just beyond the corner side yard setback is an area for future incineration. A symbolic and functional chimney will be installed, nodding to historical chimneys everywhere. If you look from this building towards the Vancouver General Hospital, the biggest thing you see is the incinerator that burns everything. It is highly filtered and completely safe. No one complains about it or asks why a residential neighbourhood is near an incineration plant. This part of the feasibility project anticipates a future where recycling programs are simply not recycling enough, landfills are still getting too full, and no one wants the mystery soil that comes from composting meat and vegetables together. We predict society will incinerate everything someday once the filtration and burn temperatures become so sophisticated that it’s environmentally cleaner to burn all our garbage.
The grade-level townhouses are narrow inside but functional. Interior stair dimensions required by current building codes don’t allow for angled winders at both landings, a common design before the 1970s. Narrow spaces are almost impossible to resolve and make functional with Vancouver’s building bylaws, but the spaces are functional if an innovative new stair is installed. A half flight and one landing would be installed. After walking up a half flight, a pulley or a motor would lift the stair up from a pivot point on the landing. Walking on the underside of the stairs would happen the rest of the trip up or down. Like the other stairs in this project, the rise and run dimensions must match, which is a minor relaxation of the current building bylaws. This stair design adds almost 36 square feet of space back into the floor plans, increasing functionality.
To maximize the floor area on the top townhouse’s bottom and second levels, a new stair concept uses one small, shared landing and one flight of stairs that pivots up and down where it meets the landing.
This project would not have been possible without the research and design thinking on our Mixing Middle and 4411 Main Street case studies. The final character of this building could take on different aesthetic directions. It could be finished in wood, metal, stucco, brick, or concrete. Those decisions are secondary and don’t impact the concept’s function.
This feasibility research comes from specific site circumstances but has city-wide applicability because its shape comes from the logical resolution of banal problems. Depending on whether it has brick or metal cladding, the project could feel historical or futuristic. We intentionally didn’t think about the architectural façade or massing as we designed this project. We subverted our design process by intentionally shifting our focus away from the architectural object. The result is a case study with functional and universal inventions that create a new super-townhouse typology.
Super Short Criticisms
D’Arcy
Is staring up at nothing from the comfort of home even a thing? Does anyone go outside anymore?
Kelsey
What everyone dreams about, living in a basement suite.
Jonny
I once watched my younger sister lose her marbles in a house of mirrors.
Jesse
Are we ready for a cease and desist from a certain Seattle architect?
Alex
Hey, it’s my turn to use the stair.
Mary
Hogwarts stairs on steroids?
Shane
Who can critique the luxury of being able to see if your car has an oil leak from the comfort of your own bed?
Breana
Who doesn’t want to wake up in the morning, look out your window, and get an instant headache?
This exploration is part of an ongoing speculative project that began as doctoral research. The collaborative case studies test ideas that will inform future built work. A new design methodology using unconventional techniques explores how to delay aesthetics and form in a search for utility-driven, human-focused projects. Architecture’s status quo is questioned through an optimistic but contrarian lens.
