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Project Summary
This project is the designing a Modular Housing Building on Seamoor Road in Westbourne. I aimed to create a sustainable, eco-friendly residential scheme designed to house the homeless, and asylum seeking to live, work, learn and engage with their local communities. With this support, it can allow people to build up confidence to integrate into their new local community and give opportunities to others seeking help.
This project has 19 residential units (housing 61 people with a mixture of 2/3 bedroom apartments, studios and co-living spaces), a café, a shop, and a college facility building.
To help the environment this project will be fitted with solar panels, triple glazing and a mechanical ventilation system (HVAC). With the complex design of different shaped models, water can run down and be harvested to be used on the rooftop urban farm.
Site Analysis
Before designing this housing project, it was important to me to understand the site, and its opportunities. By doing so I was able to decide what materials I should consider using, and how the building will occupy the site to respect the conservation area that it borders, but also make an architectural statement that is outside of the box-like multistorey apartments and offices that were around the site.
Concept Development
When exploring the possibilities for what the modular housing project's form should take, I did test to see if a traditional multistorey apartment block would occupy this area, which is it did, however I wanted to take a more non-traditional approach with the other iterations. With a mixture of hexagons, pentagons and other irregular shapes I found that I was able to create spaces on the overlapping areas, suitable for outdoor balcony areas.
I then began making models of this modules and arranged them in a verity of ways to see what the most suitable orientation would be.
Final Project
The Seamoor Road site provides an opportunity to develop the Westbourne area to create a sustainable and eco-friendly residential scheme, that creates a community project based on bringing people who are in a less fortunate situation to a residential community, where they will have the opportunity to have a home, feel safe, learn new skills, have a place to live and work while feeling part of a community.
The development will provide 19 residential units, housing 61 persons, consisting of 2 co-living apartments for intergenerational living, 2/3-bedroom apartments for families and studio apartments for couples and individuals.
This scheme aims to help homeless individuals and families, asylum seekers and immigrants. It will allow people the time and space to integrate back into society with educational opportunities to learn workplace skills. Once these vulnerable people have gained new skills and have built up their confidence, they will be able to find suitable employment. These new life skills will enable them to move to the next stage of their lives, and the facilities in this scheme can then be utilised again to continue the cycle of improving lives.
There are numerous social benefis from this community structure as not only does it provide safe homes for vulnerable people, it will give the opportunity for them to grow in confidence and develop new skills. This scheme could be supported and facilitated by the local BP College as an out-reach programme, and it could also become a hub for the local community too.
The communal areas could be used for various activities to attract the local community to engage with the project and its residents. This will also generate revenue via the shop and café. There are many elderly and lonely older people living nearby who would also enjoy using the facilities - such as a Knit and Natter groups, a card and domino club, coffee mornings with talks and therapy animals could also be popular. Art, craft, woodwork, upholstering, and jewellery making sessions could also be considered, and items made or grown in the urban farm could be sold in the shop, with the shop taking a commission from the sale to generate additional revenue. There will be a regular passing trade from M&S shoppers which will increase footfall in the scheme.
Environmentally this project will be using solar panels to generate some of its own energy, it will be triple glazed and have a mechanical ventilation system such as HVAC to make the most of the natural elements, and the facility to harvest rainwater, which will be distributed by metal chains from the 7th to the 1st floor and utilised by the Urban Farm. The green roof will attract natural biodiversity and create habitats for inspects and bees into the current nature deficient area and will also be good for mental well-being.
The shape of the building was inspired by Habitat 67 designed by Moshe Safdie. The units form was chosen through the process of getting as much natural light as possible into the structure by splitting apart a traditional apartment block with the usual rectangular units, and creating new shapes that have unique vistas depending on which room the resident is in. Each of the types of units; studios, 2 and 3 bedroom flats, and co-living spaces have their own unique floor plan, and from the exterior their home can be visibly seen, giving the residents a sense of personal identity, while still having the sense of being in a shared community
Final Project Tectonics
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