Project Entry 2017 for North America
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Modular midrise housing, Vancouver, Canada
Platforms For Life – Transferability and making of a socially viable environment. The proposed buildings bring significant density and micro communities to urban infill sites, as small as a single family house lot, providing an alternative scale (the missing middle) of medium density development while counteracting the typical dichotomy between high rise and low rise low density living. The building is designed to create transitional massing to mediate scale while catalyzing community.
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Modular midrise housing, Vancouver, Canada
How can we synthesize and manage the complexities required of a system with the objective to co-evolve with the forces of societal change in order to create buildings with lasting usefulness while overcoming the complete risk averseness and resulting lack of innovation in development, planning, financing and construction? Through synthesis, digital parametric control and platform systems technology we are creating choice and predictability where there are typically one-offs and uncertainty.
Last updated: March 21, 2017 Vancouver, Canada
People – A Platform for the empowerment of people and communities
Rampant urban development has led to a highly formulaic, repetitive and inadequate one-fits all housing stock with segregated communities. Most developments are environmentally, socially and culturally unsustainable and unaffordable. How do we create housing that provides desirable homes, not units, with high quality livability, integrated living communities, sustainable regenerative ecologies, both in terms of material and energy resources, while improving affordability?
Platform for Life is a (re)generative housing system that can accommodate the evolving needs of individuals, families and communities, and is sufficiently flexible to empower people and communities to invent their future. Parametrically driven, the approach is based on choice, adaptability and participatory design.
Planet – EcoSystem – A performance driven platform focusing on renewable resources
The “EcoSystem” is based on the predominant use of renewable materials. Cross-Laminated-Timber (CLT) panel is the primary material for the platforms cluster and structural system. It has been engineered to allow for structures up to 12 floors, built from panelized open spatial modules. The material and panelization is ideal to combine renewable resources with state of the art CNC/Robotic precision fabrication. Equally the focus is on minimizing heat loss and cooling requirements through Passive House design (and certification) with a highly airtight prefabricated building envelope, allowing for close to net zero performance and LEED V4 Platinum compliance. The building will be delivered under the City of Vancouver’s Rental100 affordable housing program.
Innovation and Prosperity - adaptability, scalability and transferability
Platform for Life’s uniqueness is based on the combination of a parameter based design systems platform, providing certainty while enabling mass customization. We continue to develop the software engine that allows the exploration a multiplicity of scenarios, providing feedback for livability, environmental performance and critical project data. The technology allows us to embrace a direct design-to fabrication and systematic prefabrication process. The cluster presents a simple, clear, systematic model: an innovative design concept that fully integrates materials and methods, structure, enclosure and mechanical systems. As an open evolving platform it adapts to the opportunities of societal technological change, while offering adaptability, scalability, transferability and certainty.