Abstract + Methodology
Research
Design
Process
09–05–2023
︎ research by design
With a focus on concrete towers in Montreal, this project explores a retrofit strategy for our housing infrastructure that emulates the changing bodies that occupy it: one with ‘good bones’ and changing skins. Rooted in the paradigm shift at the foundation of critical disability studies, this work seeks to subvert the norm and start from disability, asserting that all those who occupy space are individual and distinct and deserve the agency to live in a home that meets their needs.
People with low mobility, low vision, hearing difficulties or cognitive disabilities all embody complex and intersectional identities. Additionally, our bodies change throughout our lives, and we all share spaces with one another in interconnected households. This project treats the home as an assistive technology. It introduces slack through the transformation of an existing housing tower, enabling the homes to change and adapt along with their inhabitants. My proposal introduces new typical and atypical housing units, extends the floorplate at key locations, and improves exterior balcony conditions. Exploring the opportunities presented by the process of changing a building’s skin, it upgrades both the architecture and the accessibility of the housing complex.
Starting from Universal Design principles and exploring the writing of Disability Justice activists like Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she), the result is a design that looks beyond contemporary accessibility standards, and instead focuses on the ways our spaces work in dialog with community supports and social systems to meet our diverse needs. Whether formal (ex: home care, long term care, etc.) or informal (ex: community care webs, elderly family members living with younger family members, etc.), systems of care and support are essential to true accessibility. By facilitating the ways we already live and care for each other in community, this model creates intentional space within our housing stock for those who are typically excluded.
My focus for this research will be on Québec’s provincially owned and managed housing stock built under the HLM program. The initial phase of this program was built between 1960-1970, and one of the typologies that emerged in this phase was that of towers and denser developments built with concrete superstructures. I will use the formal and material characteristics of this typology to select a pilot project that will serve as the starting point of my research.
I then intend to explore the themes elaborated in the theory tab by testing my ideas through a collection of design experiments at various scales on my pilot building (ex: individual unit, full floor plan, façade interventions, building, etc.). Building from the research foundation I had the opportunity to develop this summer, I will lead with design and allow what I learn in the creation process to further inform my research direction.
People with low mobility, low vision, hearing difficulties or cognitive disabilities all embody complex and intersectional identities. Additionally, our bodies change throughout our lives, and we all share spaces with one another in interconnected households. This project treats the home as an assistive technology. It introduces slack through the transformation of an existing housing tower, enabling the homes to change and adapt along with their inhabitants. My proposal introduces new typical and atypical housing units, extends the floorplate at key locations, and improves exterior balcony conditions. Exploring the opportunities presented by the process of changing a building’s skin, it upgrades both the architecture and the accessibility of the housing complex.
Starting from Universal Design principles and exploring the writing of Disability Justice activists like Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she), the result is a design that looks beyond contemporary accessibility standards, and instead focuses on the ways our spaces work in dialog with community supports and social systems to meet our diverse needs. Whether formal (ex: home care, long term care, etc.) or informal (ex: community care webs, elderly family members living with younger family members, etc.), systems of care and support are essential to true accessibility. By facilitating the ways we already live and care for each other in community, this model creates intentional space within our housing stock for those who are typically excluded.
***
Using the formal and material characteristics of the selected typology I will select a pilot project that will serve as the starting point of my research. I then intend to explore the themes elaborated in the theory tab by testing my ideas through a collection of design experiments at various scales on my pilot building (ex: individual unit, full floor plan, façade interventions, building, etc.)My focus for this research will be on Québec’s provincially owned and managed housing stock built under the HLM program. The initial phase of this program was built between 1960-1970, and one of the typologies that emerged in this phase was that of towers and denser developments built with concrete superstructures. I will use the formal and material characteristics of this typology to select a pilot project that will serve as the starting point of my research.
I then intend to explore the themes elaborated in the theory tab by testing my ideas through a collection of design experiments at various scales on my pilot building (ex: individual unit, full floor plan, façade interventions, building, etc.). Building from the research foundation I had the opportunity to develop this summer, I will lead with design and allow what I learn in the creation process to further inform my research direction.