A never ending hallway of rooms.
Commons House — Examining the life of a nomadic, transient worker as a relationship between live, work, and storage.
Commons House.
MASTER PLANNING DESIGN
This project examines the life of a nomadic, transient worker as a relationship between live, work, and storage. By combining worker housing with personal storage, we are re-imagining the place of storage as a public, multi-use, and celebrated space rather than an off-site, inaccessible, and hidden place.
The housing serves as a place of temporary residence for a seasonal associate worker, who could benefit from keeping their personal belongings in a semi-permanent storage while living on very few items of furniture provided within the space, with most of their non-working time dedicated to communal living and contribution to the common good.
TEAM AND TIMELINE
This is my master-planning project as a part of Brittany Utting's Wortham Fellow studio. The research phase began in the fall of 2019. After many rounds of feedback and reiteration, the final project was presented in December of 2019 to a board of jurors at the Rice School of Architecture.
Partner: Stephanie Tyler
SCOPING THE PROJECT
The senior studio was asked to examine alternative forms of living, with special focus on XL Housing and company housing. We looked at precedent studies of live/work communities, including WeLive and Unite d'Habitation. From there, we were asked to create a new solution for communal living that addressed the nomadic worker's relationship with work and storage.
XL models created with wood, dowels, acrylic sheets, spray paint, and museum board.
EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
The Live/Work Language
I started the research phase of this project by researching existing XL housing and company housing that explored the relationship between live, work, and storage. WeLive vs. WeWork and Unite d'Habitation were the case studies I began to look at, choosing one example from the modern age and one example from history. Both places had a certain live/work language to present the residences to the general public, marketing them as utopian solutions.
I created these posters to show varying levels of information from what the general public knows to an in-depth description.
SITE ANALYSIS
A Forested Oasis
Our site is located in Houston, TX near the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The site is a 1,000 ft x 1,000 ft square of uncut forested land in a sea of warehouses and airport-related businesses. Because the site is located near so many warehouses, we deemed that it would be a perfect location for an XL housing complex that hosted the seasonal workers that could be contracted to work at the airport and other nearby businesses.
The site had an oasis-like quality — it felt like a preserved and special haven in an area that was hyper-industrialized. We kept this first impression in mind when developing our concept.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Utopian Communal Living
Keeping with our initial impressions of the site, we decided to form the concept of our project based upon the idea of an oasis. For the master planning exercise, we wanted to transform the site into a sanctuary of old-growth trees surrounding clearings with community spaces and bordered by a long band of housing and storage. By combining worker housing with personal storage, we are reimagining the place of storage as a public, multi-use space rather than an offsite, hidden, and inaccessible place.
The housing on site would serve as a place of temporary residence for a seasonal associate worker, who could benefit from keeping their personal belongings in a semi-permanent storage and could dedicate their non-working time to communal living and contribution to the common good.
One of the first steps in developing the concept of communal living was to decide the layout and relationship between the housing, storage, and the community functions. To systematically study this, we created a series of matrices with different axes, including need vs. want, human vs. inhuman, and collective vs. individual. Using this system, we laid out some preliminary iterations of how different community programs could span these gradients on a systematic grid.
Master Planning Studies
PLAYFUL SHAPES
In line with our idea of a utopian community, we wanted the buildings and clearings that we created to be intriguing and fun, beginning our studies by playing with geometric shapes at different scales.
Graphic representation of the master plan.
Housing Studies
To begin consideration for the housing bar layout, we drew inspiration from Unite d'Habitation and its modular unit that was repeated throughout the length of the building. I liked the idea of a monumental facade with a "never-ending hallway" that had a clear view of the sanctuary-like forest. The housing units are standardized and designed to be temporary and built up with a series of rolling walls and curtains to maintain acoustic and visual privacy. Each unit would come with a set of standardized furniture, one large storage unit, and one car park unit.
One continuous housing bar.
MIDTERM REVIEW
Rethinking the Execution
After reviewing the project with a board of jurors roughly halfway through the semester, we received some very helpful feedback about the aspects of our concept and design that were unclear and design choices that did not align with our concept.
WHAT THE JURY LIKED
Our Concept.
The jury was intrigued about our approach of creating a hard separation between work and live/storage, and a life of transient communal living.
AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
Integration of shapes.
The jury thought the addition of too many types of geometric shapes distracted from the original concept. They liked the master plan grid and the housing modular units and suggested designing everything along a rigorous grid and keep the clearings as the open relief areas.
The Rental Model.
The jury thought that the rental model that involves a temporary housing unit, large storage, and parking unit was simple and effective.
Community in the Sanctuary.
The jury liked the separation of communal space and use of clearings in the forest as areas of relief. However, they wanted us to commit to a clear strategy to create these clearings.
The separation of housing and storage.
Originally, we designed the storage bar to be on the opposite side of the housing and parking region. The jury thought that if we wanted to truly combine live and storage, we should commit to that idea and combine everything into one building.
JURY
MEMBER
"Commit to the idea of a single long housing / storage bar and leave the rest of the site to be a monumental forest to be explored."
FINAL PROJECT
A Natural Community
The final version of the project examines the life of a nomadic, transient worker as a relationship between live, work and storage. Commons House is a communal living system that focuses on a rental model that gives the transient worker a system of units — a 20 ft x 20 ft housing unit, a large storage unit, a small personal storage unit, a parking unit, and a set of standardized furniture.
This system encourages the exploration of the natural community spaces in the old-growth sanctuary rather than remaining in the housing bar with the majority of their non-working time. The project is a balance of order (the gridded system of housing and pathways in the forest) and freedom (open plans, open clearing).
Final master plan — housing bar on east, airport to west.
Grid and Clearing
The site is organized according to a 200 ft by 200 ft grid with the exception of the central clearing. This grid is manifested by the placement of walking paths, which gives a sense of order to the existing forest. The paths are illuminated by a system of light posts, each of which are set 50 ft apart, that act as way-finding devices to help users better understand the vastness of the forest. The privacy of the forest offers a space of solitary repose and allows for an individual experience of nature. In contrast, the clearing serves as a central hub for social interaction and communal activity. The unprogrammed nature of the clearing gives inhabitants complete agency over their use and occupation of the space. The open and unobstructed lawn becomes a respite from the intensely gridded organization of the fulfillment centers and housing bar.
Zoomed-in plan, focusing on community pavilions.
Open Pavilions
The eight amenity pavilions are staggered throughout the forest and placed in the center of their respective 200 x 200 grid unit, with more commonly-used programs located nearest the clearing, and less frequently used programs located more toward the periphery of the site. Starting at the north side of the site, the amenity programs include a greenhouse, a café, a community center, a gym, a health care clinic, a school, a library, and a studio workshop. Each pavilion adopts the same construction logic as the housing bar by implementing an open grid and movable walls. This open framework, in addition to polycarbonate sliding walls on the exterior edges of the pavilion, allows for a flexible use of the interior space.
Community Center.
Recreation Center.
Educational Facility.
Greenhouse.
Live. Work. Storage.
The architecture is comprised of six floors of temporary housing, three floors of public gathering space including amenities and storage, and two floors of parking. The roof can also be occupied as an additional recreation space.
In the housing and amenity floors, storage is interweaved into the daily activities of the workers — the public amenity spaces have large storage units for larger furnitures (i.e. mattresses, couches, and pianos) but can also be opened up to the public as rooms to gather and play, while the housing floors have smaller personal storage for daily necessities (i.e. umbrellas, backpacks, and board games). The open air ground floor combines vehicular and pedestrian traffic and maintains porosity and access from the street to the site.
Roof plan.
Housing plan.
Amenities plan.
Parking plan.
Longitudinal section.
COLLAGE RENDERS
Iconic Images
To represent the project in its purest form, I created a set of images that show the relationship between the transience of the residents' personal items and the permanence of the architecture. The images are created by a combination of layering, collage techniques and rendering to create a graphic effect.
View of the amenities floor public space.
View from clearing toward the building.
View of large storage spaces.
View from airplane toward clearing.
Model photos.
Photos from final review.
Commons House — Examining the life of a nomadic, transient worker as a relationship between live, work, and storage.
Congrats! You made it to the end.
Hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to check out my work! You can reach me at amyzh425@gmail.com — I'd love to chat with you.