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For our T-trees social housing project we used the concept of a “tree”. It is not a totally new idea, others worked with the concept in the 70s and 80s. The whole visual image of a building is constructed with two interwoven design principles. The first is supporting a core – the central block that contains the elevator and the stairs. The second is the communication module. As the trunk of the tree, which is where the blocks are mounted a branch with leaves, in this project – it is communication modules.
With a future of increasing energy, living costs, climate change, high population density, urbanization it is no surprise that we are now seeking new solutions. Everyone wants to live in a green, sustainable environment in suitable house, with low construction costs.
The basis of the apartment is a cubic shaped living module with 3m sides.
At the request of the opportunities and possible variations of easy assembling, replacing, or adding extra module depenidng of a family needs, made in recycled materials (wood, plastic, glass, aluminium), each prefabricated module consist in build-in facilities, furniture, toilets, shower, kitchen etc. depending on function of each cell, also wind mills are additional modules on the top, produce energy which cover 25% of required energy.
The module remains unchanged, which makes assembling easier. For people with disabilities, entrance in each floor will be aligned with elevator entrance.
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WOW! The Nakagin Capsule Tower with pretty ‘green’ leave windows.
Good! Very interesting design!
we have seen this project a thousand times before..
I’m not sure mr and mrs brown of middle-america want to move into this complex. The early adopters would… if they were near cities with the amenities they need for their lifestyle.
Like others here, nice aesthetics, really, but maybe with more time sketching and holistic problem solving you may have come up with a more original and empathetic design solution.
Where are the suburbs in this entry? All I see is a field of grass? There is absolutely no mention or visual indication of context. I can not believe that this is winning popular vote! It doesn’t even seem to be relevant to what the contest is about. The graphics are beautiful but you must just have a lot of friends/fans.
The designs are pretty, but does this address re-use?
Link towers with bridges to intertwine multiple structures on different levels, creating secondary egress and dynamic spatial zones. Great concept!
This design is tiring to the eye. As much as it tries to mimic trees, it just doesn’t really work. It’s not appealing to the average person. Now for a high end building that attracts celebrities and pretentious people with money, i think it’s gonna be a success. But most of us don’t have that kind of financial luxury. Plus, I don’t think it’s any more space efficient than a regular building. Why would anyone want to spend more money on constructing this design when they can build something that accommodates more people.
And no matter how few the comments are or how negative the feedback is, this design seems to be getting a lot of votes. I wonder why.
If it stacks affordable housing 10 times, then it saves 10 times the space sluburbia ruins. If it does this in style, and it miraculously catches on as the best construction method, then we all win. Most of us like suburban imagery because we grew up in it, understand it, and want to invest in something established as the norm.
Is it the best idea? Hmmmm compared to other ideas that merely double a space… what we are trying to do is figure out what the next paradigm is for the low income working class that is currently being driven out of affording a suburban home.
Now if we can figure out how this space links to community areas such as shops and schools and industry… we may be on to something.
well developed project!
good job!
We HAVE seen it a thousand times before, starting with the French architect Le Corbusier. Where is the parking? While the 1920s architects may have had an excuse for not knowing about the need to park automobiles, there is no excuse now. These things would be surrounded by parking lots. Also, what’s to prevent the space around the apartment towers from becoming lawless? There’s no street, which makes it difficult for the police to patrol, and no distinction between public and private space. Therefore nobody has any ownership of the space. We’ve built that before — see Pruitt-Igoe and any number of public housing failures. Such a design is flawed for social housing.
The freshness date on this style expired in 1982.
Unfortunately this project does not address how it will bring suburban residents to accept living in apartments. Suburban design developed from the need to create low volume traffic around private residences were people could be home owners, not renters. This project is great aesthetically and a competent design idea for standard apartments and areas of high density which is more of a characteristic of the urban environment not that of the suburban.
Pre-fab rocks, but am not sure how this repurposes suburbia. Looks like new development to me – maybe somewhere in the Netherlands.
Ummm… in most of suburbia, you can’t find huge open green spaces in which to build this project because the ‘burbs usually build out the entire property in cul-de-sacs and lots. So I concur with the others that this project doesn’t seem to have anything to do with fixing suburbia. And the cartoon leaf windows? C’mon! I understand that cavemen probably drew pictures of big game with the hopes of killing some, but drawing cartoons of leaves has absolutely nothing to do with delivering sustainability!! Let’s get serious about what it means to keep things going in a healthy way long into an uncertain future. Go to the UK and look at their post-WWII new town projects, which contain some stuff that is vaguely similar to this… they may have been novel when they were done, but because they could not be loved and weren’t built to endure, they are today’s slums, and are falling down… the antithesis of sustainability!
very impressive design!!
Great idea as far as modulisation goes but as a structural engineer I can see that the idea of hanging everything off a central core would make the central core structure expensive, possibly offsetting the savings found in the outer modulised structure. Also, surely this still uses the same ammount of ground area as a structure of the same footprint built off the ground, so even if the lower area is grass rather than a lower floor we are still using the same amount of urban space? The urban sprawl repair kit gets my vote as it seems to help make good some of our past mistakes, maximise use of urban space and address multi-uses rather than just concentrate on housing. Some great ideas and entries here though so well done to all.
At the very least it should be a requirement for this competition to be about adaptive reuse. How is this design helping solve the problems of suburbia which already has plenty of housing? This seems like a great solution for an urban setting but there are already enough vacant McMansions, why build more housing units?
Having small cubicles with all 5 sides open to the ambient atmosphere would result in the most energy wasteful solution compared to any other scenario, and d’oh!… the most costly solution in terms of construction.
is this sustainable to weather?
This design has more to do with the Corbusian “tower in a park” approach to urbanism, a method with has been proven to destroy cities. Plus, it looks just like Habitat 67, which is prohibitively expensive for most areas.
I’m no expert on these sorts of things, but is tehre any consideration of passive solar gain etc? intelligent use of natural light and orientation?
People left the city for space…thinking they will return to live in shoe boxes is questionable. People (I think) want a connection to the groud, walking from a room to a small garden ON THE GROUND is one of lifes simple pleasures.
I dont see how this fits with re-adapting suburbia? Looks like future ‘crack’ houses to me. Can you imagine if one room caught on fire?
One thing suburbia needs is to lose its dependence on the car. That means more walkability. And that means making places where people want to walk. There are many places in suburbia where proximity allows walking, but the unpleasantness of walking along the strip, for example, means that no one wants to.
Place making is about making places where people feel comfortable. Those places are the spaces between the buildings, like Main Street. This project is about making an object. There is nothing about this project that makes exterior places where people want to be.
It obviously owes a big debt to Moshe Safdie’s Expo Habitat in Montreal. it also owes a big debt to Le Corbusier’s Tower in the Park plan to tear down central Paris. That in turn was the model for housing projects all over America that have been social disasters. Many have now been torn down.
These would not be towers in parks, but towers in parking lots, because they are single-use, isolated housing that bring greater density but don’t establish a relationship to shopping, jobs and transportation. It would continue the suburban pattern of one car per bedroom, and all those cars have to be parked. They require as many square feet of paving as there are square feet in the building itself.
Last but not least, it’s safe to say that 99% of the people who like this are architects or architecture students. You reform the physical environment by making places where people want to be, not by making esoteric images attractive to only a small part of the population.
Are these structures intended for use redeveloping failed strip centers and shopping malls? It is one thing to imagine them surrounded by greenery and Calatrava walkways, but the reality of using this approach to retrofit suburbia is a bit less verdant.
This type of configuration looks a LOT like some of the ideas Archigram was throwing around back in the 1960s. In fact I was at a lecture several months ago given by Dennis Crompton in which he showed some older work that is conceptually identical to this, only it also incorporated other basic needs within close proximity. That said, I think this is a contemporary spin on a very strong idea. Very interesting.
fractal Metabolist structure.
Many container projects on this board but all using 10′ units. Why not a 40′? And why doesn’t anyone want to use Twistlocks?
Add wind turbines and solar panels that are intelligently controlled to maximize energy production. This reduces the energy requirements to run a single structure. Add ubiquitous networking throughout the structure connecting residents, computers, machines, phones, etc. Undo the alienation inflicted by modern life. Turn the tree into a connection of relationships. Each member knows the others. They all support each other in some interpersonal way. Choose residents for each tree to provide a diverse range of talents and skills. Artists can help keep the tree dynamic and livable. Musicians help create times where residents can gather and enjoy themselves. Science and engineering is necessary as well. Perhaps the tree itself is self-supported. Engineers and scientists can work together to maintain and repair network and energy systems among other things. Lastly, permeate the entire structure with its own Biome. Gardens at various levels. Flowering plants that live along certain segments of walls. The roofs should be covered with grass. This keeps the building cooler, reducing the energy requirements. It also provides small parks and gardens for residents.
The difficult task would be creating the best social network of residents to maximize the efficiency of the tree as well as the harmony, well-being, and happiness of the residents. But if we can do that, then this is where I would want to live. A tree of families forming a small sub-community. Mostly self sufficient.
I would also argue that providing a doctor and a therapist would be essential. But in the U.S., doctors at least seem to go to where they maximize their income and economic status. If that could be managed somehow, then these trees would provide a means to bring humanity back to the dehumanized and alienated people living in cities and suburbs.
And it can be done by utilizing failed real estate such as the land that is currently occupied by failing strip malls, as other posters mentioned.
I wish this were possible sooner rather than later. But I know it is only experimental. I just feel certain something like this is how humans should live in a post industrial world.
Le Corbusier is apparently alive and well. Cool building design, but rather scary implications for urban form. Been tried before and failed miserably.
This has nothing to do with suburbia or its ills. Very nice irrelevant work.
Given the almost consistently negative comments, it is puzzling to see that this is the runner-up in the voting at the moment. I see no advantage to this scheme over the dozen or so other exercises in modernist utopia redux. Here’s a test: if this is supposed to be a replacement for suburbia, how many of these “trees” would you be willing to drive or walk past before you decide to move back to the city? Is that the idea?
NE see Montreal’s Olympic village as perhaps an inspiration or two for this?
“Everyone wants to live in a green, sustainable environment in suitable house, with low construction costs.”
really?
i agree with nearly all of the commenters here. this is an ugly, unoriginal, proven failure.
i do like the social network idea proposed by comment 28 though. i’ve seen university dorms that have been networked in a similar way, but it is a relatively new idea that could maybe could be applied to different residential constructs.
Like everyone seems to notice, we have seen this before. It has the qualities of a design project sited in a dense, urban setting, maybe near water (explaining the bridge). I hope this design wasn’t just recycled and retrofitted to fit the competition parameters.
Looks amazing at night!!! Great!
I don’t like the idea of people living in the same houses… is like living in a cube! people nowadays work in cubes and u wanna put them living in cubes also?
On the other hand the design and the idea as an idea being sustainable is good.
Wow, these capsules beat the ‘efficiency’ of the ‘die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum’. 9 m2 for living space and another one for kitchen & dining, all for a family of 3? Really?
Plus, I agree with others: this proposal has little to do with the problems associated with suburbia and almost nothing with their current problems.
Steve Semes is right. Look at the comments – how can this project be in second place, almost in first? There must be a student website somewhere supplying all the votes.
It ignores the problems of suburbia and recycles Habitat 67 in a more expensive fashion (hanging everything off the “tree trunk” is bad design).
I dont like cubes.Pyramid forever…
This design fails to accommodate humans, it would work well for robots though
What you have to keep in mind is that humans are violent, stupid apes which will litter, graffiti and occasionally throw rocks through windows
A lot of designs I see seem to be patterned for some post-human spaceman culture which takes emotional inhibitors and battles librarians using magic Gun Kata (I hope no one gets that reference)
I developed something similar but with a focus on reuse and recombination, expanding living space or reducing it over lifetime. Please check out my movie which shows how this project works.
http://www.matthiaskaeding.com/mk_d_feature_04.html
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urXM7A1AgAM
Thanks.
To URBICA
urbica says:
August 13, 2009 at 11:02 am
” 9 m2 for living space and another one for kitchen & dining, all for a family of 3? Really?”
Have you ever lived in London?
I think it’s a perfect space for large cities )))
looks just like the Habitat 67 building in Montreal
http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/489_habitat_montreal_canada.jpg
Tower blocks have been shown to be a poor generator of community, especially among lower income residents. Front porches along a sidewalk/street front promote community. This proposal ignores that kind of community enhancing amenity. What about a sidewalk cafe? Where would that fit in this scheme? Mixed use? Community space? Scattered among the “trees”? The question needs a satisfying answer which this scheme does not seem to suggest.
I meant to add the issue of individuality, which is a basic human response to a controlling environment, and this is a very controlling environment. It may be hard to paint your cube a different color, and what if you don’t like leaf shaped windows? (They’re cute from outside, but would be disconcerting from the inside, where the inhabitants would have to deal with them every day!)What about your own individual outdoor space? A garden? Flowers or vegetables?
[...] like drive-through restaurants into a more diverse, cohesive and walkable urban fabric. The “T-trees Social Housing Project” has the second-greatest number of votes. It proposes modular towers topped with windmills [...]
Although I believe your intentions must be of a high order, I’m very disappointed to see this piece of ‘art’ as representative of potential future human dwellings. We must discontinue these inhumane experiments on unsuspecting future inhabitants of this ‘art.’ Haven’t we learned from the failed, unsustainable, disconnected, artistic ‘towers in the park’ social experiment yet?
Please, design and build first on what has worked over the centuries. Then add the art if you want. But please don’t start there. In the end, it’s not very kind.
By eliminating safety railings, it’s the only finalist with a population-control feature that increases its E efficiency.
I believe that this project fails in the same place as many others. Whereas, the competition premise gave a pretty exclusive context and language to subvert, comment upon, become parasitic too, densify, or neglect… this project does not show said context. The solution floats in the park, as if afraid to enter into the discussion of which it was invited to be part. It is of reputable aesthetics, and clear language. Yet what is missing is a reference how it would interact with the accumulating but disconnected infrastructure present in that suburban landscape.
Presented is a convincing floor plan. Yet, I feel no effort was made to consider what should be built or if one should even build. The solution rather was assumed because we are architects and architects “create buildings.”
I have to say I am saddened by the competition finalists (with the exception of the airships) I was hoping to see more idea based solutions. Solutions that would touch upon the architect as a designer of interfaces.
This entry does not address the problem. It is a typical, object-obsessed, modernist proposal having nothing to do with the human experience. These ideas are past their time. To propose that human beings live like this is to continue to elevate the architect’s ego above the average person’s likes and dislikes. It is arrogant at best.
This is idiotic. It reminds me of Le Corbusier’s failed social experiments of the 1960s. Where is the retail? Where are the “eyes on the street”?
Seriously? These cost-prohibitive and energy-intensive assemblages of poorly fenestrated cube-clusters, dispersed slap-dash throughout the landscape like so many LEED-certified corporate office parks, have more in common with the garish ego-maniacal engineering projects of the likes of Robert Moses than they do any strain of sustainable urbanity.
Set upon plinths in a “green” park setting (gag) and completely disentangled from any infrastructure for daily living–like bakeries, schools, or post offices–these architecture-themed sculptural objects are sited and massed for nothing more or less than aesthetic adulation from a distance. What we don’t see in these renderings are the massive parking lots that will be required to service them and connect them to the real-world of working buildings and the mixture of (hopefully pedestrian-scaled) uses and incomes that any real solution to the train-wreck of suburban design with be forced by the non-negotiable realities of physics, real-world environmental problems, and the human body to provide.
The tower-in-the-park concept of “urban” design is horribly outdated. How many would-be Plan Voisins are we going to have to wade through before we wise up? This entry, and its current success in this competition, is proof that the architecture profession has failed to learn from its own mistakes, and is still committed to servicing its arrogant presumptions of aesthetic leadership rather than its real responsibly to provide a useful, lovely setting for human society in a way that doesn’t rape the same planet it so often pillories in childish, skin-deep pastiches such as “organic” fungal massing and “leafy shaped” windows.
This is why Modern architects no longer have a voice in urban design. They are so detached from the reality of human nature that they will continue to regurgitate useless, expensive solutions doomed to a fate of failure and, ultimately, demolition. Their last attempt at urban design left our inner cities scarred, grey field wastelands. Can anyone really imagine what this would look like 20 years from now? More than likely, a gratified rusted hulk in the middle of a weed choked, crime-ridden parking lot- how’s that for sustainability?!
Who would want to be in these units in high winds, or even with the possibility of high winds? Auntie Em? Toto? We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.
I think the people in the renderings say it all: Most appear to be wandering around like they have lost something, but they can’t figure out what it is. Their souls? Transportation to somewhere real? Groceries? We’ll never know.
Dwell would have a big PR problem if the T-Tree entry wins Re-Burbia. The Sprawl Repair Kit, on the other hand, would be the best possible winner for Dwell. Here’s why:
http://bit.ly/25p0sP
With all of the negative comments…how on earth did this project receive so many votes? I fear that the system may be flawed. It seems clear that with so few comments, and mainly negative at that, something has gone awry in the popular vote arena.
It would have been nicer to see this project in a more urban setting. The rendering seems to place the “T-Tree” in a vast green plane, most likely outside of subrbia. Hence pulling more people away from the urban core and causing more urban sprawl. This concept seems better suited for a campus setting, it just looks like really cool dorm rooms.
[...] to figure out what the meaning of the apparent popularity of the “T-Tree” reburbia entry is (it is currently right behind the New Urbanist submission “Urban Sprawl Repair Kit”, [...]
What was the competiton about again? Where would this be built?
Here is a good description of this project:
Architects who thought they had exhausted every conceivable unorthodox idea for housing the poor have come up with yet another experimental concept: put them in artificial trees. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before,” says designer Adil Azhiyev of Light+Space in Las Vegas . “It’s so obvious that the solution is to stop thinking about building at ground level.”
The architect adds that the “T-trees” would work well in suburbia, where they could be hidden among all of the other trees. “Everybody is always saying that we need to get affordable housing in the suburbs,” he says. “It never works because there is so much opposition. This way, perhaps, people won’t notice. If we could convince the poor to become nocturnal, they could come down at night and no one would be the wiser.”
Asked how he came up with the idea, Azhiyev says he was racking his brains about a solution to affordable housing and suburban blight when just decided to take the afternoon off. While at the park relaxable, he was hit on the head with an acorn, apparently thrown by an upset squirrel. “All at once it came to me — this squirrel was only defending his home. Very successfully I might add,” he says, rubbing his scalp. “Trees are a terrific and defensible home for rodents and birds — why not poor people?”
There will be little competition for housing in the trees, the architect says. “To put it simply, no one with any money will live up there. That’s good for long-term affordability.”
Training could be provided in food gathering techniques, Azhiyev adds. “With a little bit of support, it is clear that the residents will need to make far fewer trips to the supermarket,” he says. “There’s really nothing like a good acorn granola. With all this fiber in their diets, residents will put little strain on the plumbing.”
The design is facing criticism from some housing experts, who pointed out that the “T-Trees” are disconnected from services, businesses, and even public infrastructure that the poor will need. They also note that the T-trees appear to be unsafe, expensive to heat and cool, and lack operable windows that would take advantage of the high-level breezes.
Azhiyev vigorously defends the design. “The poor are in desperate need for housing, and previous public housing efforts have failed,” he explained. “This is the sort of design that could take the poor out of their substandard housing and provide a safe, elevated place for them to scamper from room to room.”
Hello 1967. “Not a totally new idea” huh. I am beginning to think nobody that submitted for this competition has ever studied architectural history.
i love it! wonderful!
smashing victory!
This looks like Montreal’s Habitat 67. The whole modular apartment building concept is great, definitely not groundbreaking, but I’m sure it would be very popular in the city with urbanites. However this doesn’t possess the outside-the-box thinking that makes even the weaker concepts in this competition shine. Not to mention it has nothing to do with “reurbia”, or even urban planning. It’s just cool architecture.
Sorrry, but the first thing I thought when I saw it was “retro-future with no soul”. Not someplace I want to live. A modernist novelty better suited to an office park that wants to distinguish itself. You could build a handful of these around the world in various locations, and it’d be OK. That’s not what this contest is about. Where is the social space? How does it interract with transportation? Modular structures are very appealing for engineers because they’re easy to assemble. I think you get out exactly what you put in. Re-imagining the suburbs isn’t like snapping together Lego bricks. I try to imagine a whole city built like this, and I just shudder. Also, living in California… it may be possible to build this up to seismic codes, but it doesn’t “look safe”. I feel better in sturdy wood-frame, variously styled low-rise structures.
This looks like a project by a studen of architecture. It remains me at my years of architectural school back in the 60’s. No connection with reality whatsoever. As a “suburbianite” myself, this project does not belong in this competition.
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All bedrooms and places for true no living. I’m not sure why this is getting votes either – this is the failed 1950’s-1970’s tower-in-a-garden model with a dash of green. The idea of this competition is to solve existing suburban problems, not to envision what another single-use residential suburb could look like. This is not even good prefab: too rigid, and does not begin to address the opportunities for dynamic architecture inherent in prefab.