Beyond The Unit: A Typology Of Rooms for Adaptive Living and Contemporary Kinship

Abstract

This thesis reimagines housing in response to the limitations of the dwelling unit. In its various forms both as a detached suburban houses and stacked into apartment blocks and condos, the architecture of the unitized family dwelling is a typology of units that embodies the specific social values of the nuclear family it is designed to accommodate and is often hostile to other family types and living arrangements. Its enshrinement in policy and cultural assumption as the default way to build and organize our communities, has contributed to increasing social isolation, unaffordability, and inefficient use of resources. Breaking down the patterns of unit dwelling and drawing from existing alternatives like co-living, housing co-operatives, and cohousing, this thesis proposes a new and adaptable housing typology based on the aggregation of rooms. This typology of rooms replaces predefined and static units with a dynamic system of rooms with porous and mobile boundaries, which residents can assemble into dwellings and continuously reconfigure according to their changing spatial needs. The goal is to empower residents with tools to create dwellings that can accommodate their diverse living arrangements within a socially responsive building. The thesis further examines how this typology can be realized through various adaptability strategies responding to its unique parameters and goals, including changes to the design process, governance, operation, and ownership models of buildings. To demonstrate the principles of the typology, four prototypes are designed at different scales, each employing a unique set of strategies to illustrate the breath of contexts possible for the typology in practice.