MAR-MAY 2022
This work comprises the final output from my Master of Architecture design research project at Northeastern University in a studio led by Kyle Barker. The project picks up where the previous zine and research phase, yours/mine/ours: a zine about american housing left off. As a designer, I assumed the fictional position of someone who had picked up the zine and was moved by its call to action to the point of acquiring a near-urban single family house and undertaking a design exercise to increase it's density. The project aims to identify the issues that plague the predominant single-family housing type in our society through the specific lens of Northeastern America, using the design of a radical addition as a vehicle to explore and advertise those issues.
I chose to focus this final phase of the project on one of the six homes presented in the previous zine, focusing on the millennium mansion type for several reasons. Being the most recent type of all those studied, it has been most affected by the changes to the housing market detailed in the zine. From an aesthetic standpoint, it represents the physical bloat of the single family type. Lastly, it is a relatively unexplored subject to project an architectural intervention on compared to the well-documented expansions to older housing stock.
I first identified primary zones that the existing floor plan can be simplified and be prepared for the addition of communal programming. I then identified existing features of the town the home is located in (Needham Massachusetts). It is important to identify that there are myriad benefits (shopping, transit, greenspace, etc) within a reasonable bicycle or walk that should be available to as many people as possible. Finally, I explored the ratio between the average size of Massachusetts households versus what could be possible on the site. These early analyses were the primary drivers of the design process.
