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Affordable Apartment Blocks - Heneghan Peng Architects

The proposal seeks to address housing by providing a spatial framework through which occupants may inhabit their space. Rather than a prescriptive approach, we feel occupants should be allowed to organize themselves, in order to construct a personal space. We chose to generate the most optimal spatial configuration for each unit targeting issues such as maximizing light penetration, public/private relationships between units, natural ventilation and spatial expansion through articulating major/minor views from each unit while maintaining privacy separation. This provides a highly flexible void so that individual occupants are able to assemble for themselves a variety of ways they may choose to organize their own personal space.

Due to the nature of the site, it was important that the project be active in engaging as well as transforming its' immediate urban environment at street level. This is achieved by a series of strategic operations: We begin with a straightforward assumption of filling in the site, building to the boundaries while maintaining the two pathways that allow access to the central courtyard space. We then impart a shift in site to acknowledge the corner siting of the project. This results in the displacement of the side corridors into two urban courtyards, providing an urban link that is activated by retail, into the interior centre of the block.