This thesis explores the formation of architectural responses to environmental questions by proposing a response to a historical arc of environmental, technological, and social imagination in architecture.
When applying architectural strategies, designing a poly-scalar system required resolving between types of architectural categories. For example, applying a design prefabricated and meant for disassembly at a larger scale would imply applying the same component system to a range of environmental conditions and needs. However, a site-specific design would limit the scope of such a system. Energy generating infrastructure, for example, is isolated from housing development, or applied as a formal afterthought without reflecting the relations which this technology can create (for example, a microgrid which creates an independent, local system of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources). Developing a formal integration of housing with technology was key for this project.
Hence, the proposed architectural system is broken up into two components, essentially separating the roles of housing to creating livable space and to respond to larger scale environmental systems. The two parts of the system are an infrastructural spine and the housing units. This proposed architectural system allows individual dwellings to adjust independently of others and according to personal needs and preferences while integrated cohesively with larger scale environmental systems. It integrates social organization into existing technology that operates at these larger scales to offset energy expenditures and mitigate climate risks. Lastly, it allows the two different parts of the system to simultaneously embody different architectural categories identified in the research phase.
The infrastructural spine is highly site specific, intended for long term use (beyond the life cycle of a single house) and can be integrated into large scale environmental mediation systems such as the ones identified in this map. It spatializes a type of infrastructure and creates structure, insulation, and utility access for new housing units to be plugged into it. The housing units are prefabricated, modular, and designed to be assembled around the interface of the infrastructure, used for one occupation cycle, and then disassembled for reuse.
Because the infrastructural spine provides structure, utilities, openings, and responds to site specific climate conditions through shading, wind protection, drainage in case of flooding, etc. the housing units themselves can be adjusted to the inhabitant’s spatial requirements, to local supplies of materials, and less intensive methods of manufacturing.
