La Sherrie DDes Research Vancouver, British Columbia 2024
What is Being Subverted?
1 Front yard setbacks 2 Nature 3 Need (desire) for natural light and views 4 Fire escapes 5 Hallway conventions 6 Code and regulation differences between types of structures (normal vs. modular) 7 Ground oriented family townhouses 8 Structural expression
Fictional Case Study Questions
How can a building be added to without dislocating the current tenants? How can ignoring some building bylaw setbacks be justified? Can fire exiting become an everyday asset? How can family-friendly three-bedroom units become more plentiful? Can windowless rooms be made appealing? Is there a new residential typology somewhere between a normal building and a Britco modular office? What can new provisional housing look like?
Dictation
This project is a real feasibility study for clients who own a few apartment buildings on an urban block near the new Broadway Subway project. The area is transitioning to medium-density apartment buildings, with a new tower here and there. This site has a three-storey walk-up rental apartment the clients have owned for over 50 years. We initially helped this owner turn overly large one-bedroom layouts into functional two-bedroom layouts to attract couples with young families or roommates.
Our client challenged us to find a conceptual way to add more housing because this project is two blocks from the Broadway subway line that’s being built under Vancouver’s Broadway Plan. Our client is a long-term landlord to some tenants who have rented from him for over 25 years. The entire area around this site is being up-zoned. Our client wanted a design proposal that would not displace any of these tenants while providing new units on top of his three-storey building to take advantage of the increased zoning allowances.
An unfortunate aspect of up-zoning is tenant displacement. Everyone is evicted whenever an apartment building is torn down to build an even larger one. The tenants have the right of first refusal. They can come back to live in the new building once it is complete, and there are rules to ensure that the rent is at the evictees’ original rate. But practically speaking, tenants must find somewhere else to live for two or three years. Leaving that temporary apartment to move back is disruptive even if the financial details are in their favour.
The alternative is letting everyone stay in their apartment and trying to build a new building on the roof of the existing building. Safety, service disruptions and the structural capacity of the existing building make this option rarely feasible.
Our proposal is inspired by temporary modular housing that is built in remote locations or even in Vancouver as temporary housing for the homeless. It is also inspired by the city’s allowance for individuals to live in campers in parking lots, under overpasses and in city parks. Defining a new temporary building typology that is somewhere between a tent and a code-conforming building could let housing be deployed much faster than the current development model.
One of the big inspirations for this case study is people who live in their RVs full-time. As vehicles, these homes are held to a different standard, even though they have hot water tanks, electricity, sinks, faucets, and appliances. Yet they fall outside the building code. Vancouver officials allow people to stay in their campers all the time. If people live in RVs for years at a time and no one disallows it for fire or seismic reasons, this case study argues for a new kind of architecture with its own niche code or exemptions. It should create provisional housing somewhere between an RV and a permanent building.
Using common scaffolding technology, new modular three-story apartments straddle the existing apartment building. Every unit has a party wall on each side, so the deep beams made from triangulated scaffolding stock can freely span the existing building without requiring posts. Scaffolding can handle being left in wet weather because its steel is galvanized. Many construction sites leave their scaffolding up for years at a time. Many buildings have envelope repairs at some point, done with scaffolding designed to withstand earthquakes. Scaffolding’s aesthetic has hopeful and positive associations. It is like urban dental floss that everyone might not love, but the results are universally positive.
Almost all construction sites have a modular site office raised up in the air without conventional concrete foundations, so the technology proposed for this design is common.
The first issue with putting new space on top of another building is how to get up to it without touching the existing building or inconveniencing it. We will solve this problem by installing a new construction-type elevator in the front yard setback. In any other similar project in the neighbourhood, this area is mostly just lawns or shrubs, except for the sites with massive trees.
No structures are allowed in the front yard setback area, but a quick survey of the area finds trees living in these front setbacks. All these trees were planted by someone. Apparently, many are Christmas trees that grew tall after they were planted outside, after spending the holidays inside. Forest-sized trees often dominate a site’s entire property and the neighbours on each side. They hang out over the street and often touch the tree on the opposite side, making dark tunnel-like streets. The city’s bylaws protect these trees. You can’t touch them or cut them down. For this case study, we are proposing a fake tree trunk in the front yard that hides an elevator shaft because the form of a tree is clearly visually acceptable and condoned in some setbacks.
This concept is not new. There’s a well-known building in downtown Vancouver near Stanley Park on English Bay. It has a tree growing out of an architectural cylinder running up the middle of the façade. Our tree trunk elevator resembles the Swiss Family Robinson’s artificial inhabitable tree in Disneyland. It is also related to the gold replica of Stanley Park’s hollow tree by the artist Douglas Coupland at the Marine Gateway Sky Train station.
Upon arrival, occupants or guests must always take the elevator up. But if a fire happens twin exit stairs are required as twin fire escapes. Logically, these two exit stairs would run down the side of the building. But the exit path would inevitably run in front of people’s windows with this type of exit. We proposed a fix. What if every time the fire exit path went past someone’s window, it was on the lower part of the window? A bar-grate walkway surface could be detailed, allowing plants and flowers to grow through gaps in the walkway’s “floor.” Our fire exit path feels more like a window box than an industrial safety feature, as a little treat for the tenants in the existing apartment building.
If a fire ever occurred, tenants from the new townhouse could just run along the fire exit and tiptoe through the tulips. The flowers and plants would discourage the fire exits from being used day-to-day, so the elevator would be the primary entrance and exit.
Since the original building’s facades were not designed with a fire exit in mind, there are some instances when the bar grate exit path would run near the top of a tenant’s window. There can be a little overhang or brise soleil in these locations, which is good practice to avoid the need for air conditioning during the summer.
Double-loaded corridors in a typical apartment building are unpleasant. You can’t avoid the smell of your neighbour’s cooking or awkward conversations. There are no interior halls in our case study. Exterior hallways are ideal, making each of our new townhouses more like a townhouse at grade. A complete perimeter hallway is used to increase the setback distances on all four sides for fire and to make craning in the three-part modular townhouses easier. Everyone has their own front door and three bedrooms. The circulation space functions like a classic wrap-around porch.
The development industry is not interested in building three-bedroom units. They make more money on one—and two-bedroom apartments. Families can live in two-bedroom apartments when their kids are young for a while, but families often outgrow smaller units. Most families have two kids, so three-bedroom units are coveted and rare.
One technical difficulty with our proposal is two of our bedrooms don’t have access to light and air. We will fix that with large periscopes that can be aimed in the user’s preferred direction. Inspired by Velux’s Sun Tunnel skylights, light and air come down the same shaft as a close approximation of an operable window on an exterior wall. Those who want a more immersive experience can use the periscope for air and a large LED screen that projects the view they would have if they didn’t have neighbouring townhouses on three sides. For consistency, even the four townhouses at the ends will not get windows looking outwards, so every modular unit is the same. LED window technology is improving quickly. I drove a rental car that didn’t have a rearview mirror, but it had an LED screen showing what was behind the car from a backwards-pointed camera. It makes a lot of sense. The brightness can be controlled and dimmed at night. And if someone has a big head in the backseat, they don’t block the view. After spending time driving a vehicle with this feature, it really is the same as looking through a mirror or window. This detail and type of window has widespread applicability beyond this case study.
Super Short Sentences
D’Arcy If it is OK to live in your camper, there needs to be a new building code for housing that is somewhere between a camper and a permanent building. Boring details like fire escapes make good gardens. If Vancouver loves its trees so much, tree-like inventions should be allowed, just like artificial turf is a stand-in for the real deal.
Kelsey New apartments suspended above existing apartments.
Jonny Background: A relatively sleepy site off of a bustling commercial corridor that needs new. A typical cake has several layers, all different but equally important and necessary.
Jesse Can we increase density and allow new construction without disrupting and renovicting existing tenants?
Alex Rooftop retrofit of an apartment building, growing to suit new zoning regulations. Has an elevator tree.
Mary Like an icing on top, La Sherrie suggests that added density can/should simply be that - literal, no fuss, and fun.
Shane Read in Owen Wilson’s voice: “Well, everyone knows you build a building from the ground up. What this project presupposes is…what if you didn’t?”
Breana For humans who want to feel like squirrels.
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.
