Retrosuperfuture
What if two underused parking spaces in alleyways could be the site for a new type of urban living space?
I used this defining rule as a way to propose a new architectural product that would inhabit the alleyways of the West End of Vancouver. From this guiding principle, I designed an individual example of what this could look like: an open-envelope, market-style building that contains small, but very affordable commercial and residential units for small business owners to have an easier access to being part of the business market in the City. The idea of creating micro-renting spaces would thus enliven the lane, provide access to people with really-small businesses to more affordably reach customers, and offer a myriad new areas for the public to gather in a City notorious for acutely unaffordable housing and retail spaces.
Setting: ENDS Studio 401, UBC SALA (Academic)
Year: Spring 2021
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, CANADA
Programmatic use diagram of my proposed building
The base condition for this academic project was designing a building over two standard Vancouver parking spaces (2.5m x 5.5m/8'-2" x 18'). I approached this task with the idea of micro-lending, an economic model that allows burgeoning entrepreneurs access to small amounts of capital to be able to get a chance of starting up smaller businesses that wouldn't otherwise be funded ("foot-in-the-door"). Another key element was proposing a hyper urban density that I took as inspiration from multiple fictional mediums and movies, such as Ready Player One, Star Wars, and Bladerunner. The idea was of exciting as much of a vision of density as a key element in addressing the crisis of housing and real estate unaffordability in part created by Vancouver's extremely high degree of single family housing which has created an enormous shortage in the supply of housing, and thus, high costs of housing.
The result is a multi-programmable space that allows for multiple commercial, residential, leisure, and social spaces to co-exist in one space, and thus create thriving enclaves across Vancouver while increasing access to rental units, and to spaces for small, often unique businesses to operate.
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Hand sketches made when thinking of and iterating on early design ideas
Ultimately, my experimentation heightened the importance of stacking, and tightly binding different programs in "blocks", which opened a world of possibility and different configurations.
Residential units made sense on the top floors, for greater security and privacy, whereas commercial units made sense on lower levels, for greater access and proximity to the street and users. Open spaces for socialization were also added as a means to leverage the vertical element of the building.
Floor 0
Floor 1
Floor 2
Floor 3
Plan drawings of the proposed building
Wound together by stairs and open, plaza-like spaces, this building type seeks to leverage the potential of smaller commercial and residential spaces to create a vibrant offering for City users. Thus, "micro-renting" creates the potential for greater access to consumers and improved affordability inherent in density.
My proposed design definitely would stand to benefit from a deeper investigation into how the desired architectural elements interact with structural, mechanical, and electrical systems, as well as an investigation into the viability of proposals based off of governing building codes. However, I believe that within the scope of the design challenge, this design offers interesting insight into trying to address a broader systematic challenge by targeting small-scale approaches which have the potential for outsized benefits for users.
