ARC3016Y S
Instructor: Vivian Lee
Meeting Section: L0104
Tuesday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

SIX STORIES is a research studio on Collective Housing rooted in three primary areas of investigation: 1) Analysis of housing types in the intermediate scale of 6 Stories 2) Stories of how 6 people in urban centers experience collective living today, and 3) Research of secondary and tertiary streets that have allowed for novel forms of collective living.

Type:
The design of housing necessitates the negotiation of competing desires across a wide range of scales. Housing constitutes the basic makeup of all cities and yet it is inclined to the subjectivity of domestic values. Through the simple aggregation of dwellings, house becomes housing and as a result confronts issues of density versus individuality, the requirements for public access against the instinct of privatization. This singularly ambivalent architectural subject demands attention to both physical and social space, from the scale of infrastructure to that of an individual room.

Stories:
There has been a renewed interest in various forms of Collective Living. With the surge of housing prices in urban centers, the isolation of nuclear families, and an increasing societal desire to create communities, Collective Living has risen as a grassroots solution to sharing domestic space. Familial alliances such as intergenerational housing to families that choose to live together as roommates in order to share expenses, chores, and their experiences. “Collective living isn't about trying to pack as many people into a house as possible, ...but using space effectively to create a community.”[3]

Through field research of firsthand interviews, students are given the opportunity to discover Collective Living arrangements that might be technological, programmatic, or perhaps ecosystemic. From a social standpoint how can we reorganize living adjacencies, family networks, and reconstitute the idea of neighborliness. Competition and conservation for resources might also attune new spatial paradigms that maximize the use of air, light, water, and land. All students should consider these terms by proposing an innovative and visionary approach to collective living.

Streets:
Streets structure the sequence in which we approach housing but also the interface between housing and the other attractions and amenities in the city. The street also mediates our relationships to extended family, friends and most importantly strangers. In this sense a house should not be understood as an envelope that encloses single families, but as a gathering place. As such the envelope is permeable and the act of gathering pushes out into the communal spaces beyond its footprint.

Yet what is the street and what is essential to it? In the crucible of densification commensurate with urban growth, how can we preserve the qualities of the street in new contexts? If the street is a kind of commons, how can architecture not only preserve its public and perhaps semi-public qualities but also propagate it inwards and upwards?