|Digital Matter
|Infinite3
Modular Housing
|Team
Ziying Zeng, Victoria Fedorova Christos Trompoukis, Iulia Maria Lichwar
|Faculty
Areti Markopoulou, David Andres Leon, Raimund Krenmueller, Nikol Kirova
|Project year
2021-22
Infinite3 attempts to create a system that can rapidly increase the housing stock, while operating within the confines of circular materialities and Design for Disassembly. The emporement of people to take a more active role in the design process is also encouraged. Through tools and protocols for designing and reconfiguring apartments, the residents can have fool control over their space, it’s materials and it’s life cycle. Extensively exploring natural resources in Toronto, Ontario, and across North America, the region’s rich geological conditions have fostered extensive forests, with Ontario and Quebec standing as major timber producers.
The research framework involves analyzing the environmental impact of construction, assessing global housing demands and Ontario’s housing crisis, and proposing sustainable solutions to address resource consumption, housing shortages, and affordability challenges in the region.
A qualitative comparison of different structural system was performed. The selected systems were ranked based on their ease of disassembly, their expandability, the types of materials they require, the difficulty of construction, as well as their structural reliability. In the end, a combination of two systems was chosen. All housing units can be easily reconfigured. In this example, the walls of the bedroom are disassembled. One of the CLT pieces is also removed. In the new space a staircase can be added. By expanding on a secong floor the residents can add two new rooms to their house with minimal cost and disruption.
The first phase of implementing our system involves configuring the tower location and size within a given site. Local building restrictions and design considerations have been consolidated in an eight step process has been developed which can be applied in any context.
Followed by it, Groups of people and families of any size, can decide to live together in a neighborhood. Each household is presented with a user interface. Through a four step process they can design their apartment and place it in the building.
Once the layout of the neighborhood is created, the residents can submit their apartment designs.
These units are fitted around inside the neighborhood, using Wasp, a grasshopper plugin for discreet element design. Handles are created on the faces of the bathroom / entrance cells and a second set of handles are created on the units themselves. The locations of these handles is determined by the spatial relations of the units.
Through Wasp, a big catalog of solutions is produced. The solutions that do indeed contain all of the input apartments are isolated and given to the group of residents, who can decide on their desired configuration.
All housing units can be easily reconfigured. In this example, the walls of the bedroom are disassembled. One of the CLT pieces is also removed. In the new space a staircase can be added. By expanding on a second floor the residents can add two new rooms to their house with minimal cost and disruption.
