Claudia Wigger and Craig Borum!Double Density!

A672 Systems Studio!Fall 2019!

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The Double Density Studio is concerned with working toward new approaches to equitable housing as a critical component of the urban condition. This year, our studio has a unique opportunity to collaborate on affordable workers housing in industrial Japanese New Towns. We have been invited to collaborate with Jan Polivka of the Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development at the RWTH Aachen and Michihiro Kita from University of Osaka in a workshop focused on alternative approaches to the prevailing forms of redevelopment underway in many of these aging municipalities. The studio and workshop aim to rethink the mono-structured housing stock of the industrial new town thru viable concepts for urbanization, flexibility and mixed uses. !

Senri New Town is the oldest of New Towns in East Asia and one of the largest New Towns in Japan, situated in Osaka. The city is looking for redevelopment concepts, both radical and soft, which would provide alternatives to the prevailing rigid social housing structures and develop a new model for urban housing. Students in the Double Density Studio will work in teams to propose solutions which would disrupt the current functional division between housing, civic and commercial centers and related open spaces. The studio will work on a site currently slated for redevelopment to double its current density. The site is rich with different existing typologies. !

The Double Density Studio will embrace the possibility of reinventing it by a new spatially integrated, functional design concept. The results produced will be discussed in broader context on how architects and urban designers may contribute to humanization of mass housing in global contexts. !

This studio includes mandatory travel to Osaka and Tokyo, Japan from September 12 to September 21.!

During this travel we will work together with local experts and our partners from Osaka University and RWTH Aachen in a workshop setting from September 14 through 17 in Osaka. Following the workshop we will be traveling to Tokyo to visit and study different housing typologies.!

All expenses of the trip such as accommodation in Japan, ground transportation, health insurance and entrance fees are covered by a stipend from the College. Additional cost of travel for each student will be the cost of airfare to Tokyo from either Detroit or Chicago. (Students interested in signing up for this studio might check the price of airfare before balloting to gauge actual additional cost of travel.)!

Students in this studio should plan to meet Friday September 6th at 5pm to coordinate travel logistics. Location to be determined.

Arch 672 Systems Studio Fall 2019Taubman College of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Michigan

Mondays and Thursdays 1:00 - 6:00

Prof. Christina Hansenhansench@umich.edu

Prof. Lars Gräbnergraebner@umich.edu

inspiringaffordable

multi-generational

inclusivesustainable

catalyticvisionaryadaptive

productiveunexpectedconnectedpermeable

flexiblediverse

transformativeunrestricted

pedestrian friendly

synergistichybrid

multi-cultural

Currently, Detroit is experiencing an unparalleled demand in housing. This creates the opportunity to develop adequate housing models for an increasingly diverse population. Only innovative new housing typologies and adequate planning tools can address the changing demands on the living environment. Innovation, however, is delayed by prevailing and non-adaptive economic principles as well as traditional marketing schemes. These principles are often times not in tune with current needs of a new society in urban settings on one hand, and outdated masterplans and zoning regulations on the other.

MARKET PLACE SYNERGIES is a studio to think creatively of new actors in the living environment. Demographic changes in urban agglomerations, changing interests in the population, and a higher percentage of unique forms of living require more differentiated and inclusive approaches towards the planning and design of contemporary housing.

This studio offers the opportunity to innovate, develop and test new alternative concepts for housing by creating new territories where current routines can be questioned. In collaboration with the Detroit Planning Department, the studio teams will explore the synergistic proposition of living in the energetic and creative environment amidst the Eastern Market in Detroit.

The teams will explore how different programmatic elements can contribute to a vibrant and resilient housing and lead to a synergistic outcome. The envisioned projects will react to new and emerging lifestyles and test a variety of innovative housing models while having the potential for being catalytic, inclusive, and transformative.

MARKET PLACE SYNERGIES is a studio, where all authors and teams are asked to develop and present convincing and inspiring arguments through strong systematic, environmental and social concepts. The outcomes will demonstrate innovation in alternative construction and integrative systems. The studio will work in one confined area in Detroit, however models of housing should address broader concerns, ideas and concepts deployable universally.

Participation in organized visits to Detroit is mandatory. There is no lab fee and all necessary expenses need to be carried by the students.

Live-Live Matīss Groskaufmanis, Sanders Fellow 

Sharon Haar, Professor 

This studio will focus on collective

self-build “kit” models for affordable

housing. We plan to explore how the

design, development,

and—ultimately—care for oneself and

one’s home can be articulated as a

collective and replicable project.

Rising prices of new housing suggest

that an economic upturn might be on

its way for Detroit. However, it is likely

that a significant part of Detroit’s

current population will be excluded

from the benefits of the ongoing

infusion of both work and workers of

the knowledge economy.

To address this, we will explore alternatives to the traditional frameworks of residential real estate development,

individual mortgages, and thus the financialization of one’s life. If we empower communities to produce self-built

homes, can we also think of the design of those homes beyond the proliferating invasion of work into the domestic

sphere, fundamental to the knowledge economy? How can we think of alternative forms of self-built domestic

space that would support a way of life that pertains to “live-live”, rather than “live-work”?

To envision a new, open source, and collective— rather than for-profit—oriented model of development, we need

a fresh look at all of the systemic components that cumulatively make up a housing block. In part this implies

questioning architecture’s obsession with the production of building instructions for one-off prototypes. Could we

consider a spatial formula for a housing development that could be replicated multiple times? As we have become

familiar with the affordable, functional, and ready-to-assemble products of IKEA or MUJI, what could be the

analogy in collective self-build housing?

Within these frameworks, student teams will

explore issues such as urban design, domesticity,

communal living, economies of production,

constructability, and others. The studio is open for

students finding their own way through the

topics, and encourages the development of

individual fascinations within the overall theme.

 

Above: a matrix of possible floor layouts of the MUJI House,

Kazuhiko Namba (2004).

Left: a standardized timber housing module for the Urban

Village Project, developed by SPACE10 and EFFEKT (2019).

Arch672 Systems Studio|Taubman College University of Michigan|Mondays & Thursdays 1-6 pm|Fall 2019

An Economy of Means: Reframing ConstructionThis studio proposes a re-emphasis on craft--design, material deployment, and detail expression--so that new housing may be a locus for quality architecture and construction. The Fordist approach to mass production relies an a economy of scale. Craft operates at the local scale, affording an economy of means. It is a scale that allows the average Detroiter to invest their own capital and labor, and reap the value that is created. Well-crafted housing can become a catalyst for a new urban and social dynamic while helping to build local skills, trades and wealth. We can design buildings that deploy innovative construction systems and employ both new and traditional ideas of craft to create homes that are attainable, that provide work that is fulfilling, and communities that are healthy and mutually supportive.

An Economy of Scale: Refocusing Design ExpressionWe will focus in the studio on smaller scale housing typologies: townhouses, rowhouses, terraced housing, courtyard housing, urban villas--and their smaller scale design components: entries, kitchens, baths, windows, stairs. This scale of housing alternatives can be more affordable and attainable and provide for enhanced qualities of both community and privacy. A focus on the design of smaller scale components allows the integration of higher levels of craft at all scales, ultimately creating better, longer-lasting buildings.

A Local Economy: Crafting a Design CultureTwentieth century Detroit produced beautifully crafted architecture and design of global influence. Design thinking, materials and fabrication methods were synthesized from a local culture of industrial and architectural design. Through an investigation of both traditional analog handcraft and digital fabrication, this studio will explore how craft works at this moment in Detroit’s history and contributes to a renewal of the city’s great design and architectural legacy.

The Economy of CraftKit Krankel McCulloughMick Kennedy

Arch672 Fall 2019 Systems Studio

Image from Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation by Richard Sennett. Frances Johnston, “Making a Staircase,” Hampton Institute, undated glass-plate. Photograph (c) The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Constructing Entanglements

Interdependent Physiologies for Domestic Futures

Historically, the modernist city was conceived as a place that could achieve efficiency and maintain order through acts of separation: city from countryside, housing from manufacturing, people from vehicles, and so on. Yet at the same time, visions such as Broadacre City (Wright), Arcosanti (Soleri), and Agricultural City (Kurokawa), have proposed alternatives to this method of making city though visions for urban developments and buildings intertwined with the layers that the modernist city intended to separate. These alternative propositions championed a juxtaposition of the domestic with agriculture through new forms and organizations for living.

Now, in contemporary Detroit—as well as worldwide—separations once made by cities, and by architecture itself, are once again being questioned, challenged, and reconceived through paradigms of adaptation, resilience, circularity, and biological models. Working across a series of sites that in the area of Detroit’s Eastern Market, the Constructing Entanglements studio will research and develop architecture propositions that combine, intertwine, hybridize, and crossbreed housing with food production and its interrelated matters of water and energy. Through rigorous speculation the studio will move beyond known machinic and managerial frameworks related to food systems, and will instead try to cultivate relationships and social practices of collective living among humans and other biotic and animal species through contemporary reconceptualizations of the idea of “nature”. The working methodology will oscillate between the urban scale of the city block and its landscape(s) to the material scale of building elements and assemblies in order to work through the interdependencies between building and environment. We will become attuned to material and energetic flows across constructed and biotic systems, and will consider how natural behaviors can be used to shape architectural form. We will explore hybrid tectonic and spatial arrangements that can be generated from part to whole relationships such as collective form or combinatory strategies, with the aim of developing new prototypes for living with others in Detroit.

University of Michigan Taubman College ARCH672 | Velikov + Rule | Systems Studio Fall 2019

Kathy VelikovJonathan RuleMo + Th 1-6pm

Kisho Kurokawa - Agricultural City , 1960