First stop: Technologies / Typologies

The journey has started to a destination ahead of us: better housing for our future cities. Professor Llonch’s section -NYC Hous(e)ing, re thought- plans to research, evaluate, analyze and propose a truly speculative approach, while maintaining the major goal, which is to design an innovative project in the housing typology. With the new construction technologies at the core of our research, the objective of this studio is to offer an inventive response of affordable housing to the local, social and environmental challenges of our time. From the cityscape, to the “bedroomscape,” houses should be spaces that respond beyond the basic needs of the people who will inhabit them. We need to bring architecture back to the housing industry, we cannot continue letting a hungry market decide how we should live. Homes are sacred spaces with the power of transforming the societies for which they are built.

This journey has many stops; the first one is “Technologies / Typologies.” In the physical space of houses, technics acquire a leading role. What is the materiality of each space? What construction methods should we use? Which are the newest housing delivery technologies?

On September 19^th, Professor Llonch’s students met to discuss their findings on these aspects, pinning up their research, and sharing their analyses of new methods. The technologies and concepts that were presented during the session were: Modular Housing, Kits of Parts, 3D Printed Housing, and New Findings. Meredith Cocco, Director of Marketing at Cetra Ruddy, attended the session.

In addition, students researched different typologies of dwellings, exploring the nested scales of housing: spaces for domestic activities (eating, cooking, washing, sleeping, among others), dwelling units (in a variety of households, from individuals to multi-generational families), residential buildings, and urban morphology. The analyzed projects included Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie (Montreal, Canada), Star Apartments by Michael Maltzan Architecture (Los Angeles, USA), Via Verde by Grimshaw + Dattner Architects (Bronx, USA), and Via 57 by BIG (New York City, USA).