Project Description:

Integrated lifestyle housing, popular in Europe, redefines mass housing as an autonomous entity and cultural project. 18 plots would each host a housing complex and community space and/or service.

My proposal, The Artisan's Home, contains 35 housing units, a cabinet maker's workshop and a showroom. This project reintroduces the basic trades or "blue-collar" industries back into the urban environment. Each wing of the complex has a single loaded corridor along the central level, enabling 28 of the 35 apartments to be maisonettes. The workshop is at street level underneath the housing units where passersby on the sidewalk are able to observe the cabinet makers at work. The sidewalk also flows from the street into the building and back out again, drawing pedestrians into the building, allowing the line between public and private to blur.

Finally, the facade of the building is a free-flowing perforated masonry screen that floats one story above the ground, reinterpreting the role of masonry as a structural entity.