inhabiting edge city

Gerard Crowe
The housing unit consists of simple geometric volumes interlocking to form a more complex mass. This mass has volumes cut from it to create private terraces, allowing light and air to filter into all units. The apartments and duplex units are woven around the stairwell in order for each level of the duplex units to have lift access, facilitating persons with disabilities. The blocks are pulled towards the enclosing wall, releasing the best part of the site for landscaping and recreational activities. The area also is kept free from cars by providing underground car parking.
There is a series of spaces set up with varying degrees of privacy from the private terraces to the semi-private roof garden to the public landscaped/recreational area. I wanted the site to remain private, similar to a cluster village or a cul-de-sac, within a thick surrounding wall ; penetrated only by pedestrian movement.

David Flynn
The site is around two sides of a pub, adjacent to the Navan Road. Central to the scheme is the creation of a layer, which would separate this 'edge city' condition from the residential area above. The layer takes the form of a landscape and the housing, an integral part of this layer, rises to no more than two storeys above, to create a new type of urban landscape. Car parking and services are located below. The units, which interlock in section, all have private gardens and south-facing living spaces. In this scheme, several of the components of the beloved housing estate have been recombined to test a different version of the house, and to triple the density, without sacrificing the individuality of anyone's home.

Aideen Lowery
The scheme consists of five long apartment blocks, 4.5m wide and ranging from two to five storeys high, envisaged as glass walls splayed along the length of the suburban site. The south facing facades are treated as open and public while those facing north are more private. The degree of privacy needed for each individual space is answered by its material treatment on the facade and the choice of glass used is a response to the function contained behind. Different arrangements of apartment types therefore induce a random collage pattern on the north facade. Independent routes slice through the blocks, for cars at ground level and pedestrians at first floor level, providing a link between Ashleigh Park housing and Talbot Bridge. A reinterpretation of green space by creating a forest landscape, provides relief from the tarmac and lawn of traditional suburbia. Light, both natural daylight and artificial night lighting, is central to the character of the design.
The scheme encourages a move for the user towards more open living patterns and affords the passing commuter a welcome change in roadside scenery.

Claire Mc Manus
This project completes the perimeter of trees around the crescent-shaped site in a rhythm of heavy and light. The eastern side faces the busy Navan road and roundabout which border the site. The western side is about turning in on the community. Heavy spines mark entrances and carry services. 10 x 10m floors span between them with parking underneath. Partitions divide each floor into apartments of varying sizes. These may be moved so that space can be borrowed from a neighbour for a party or an office can fold down after work to allow for a larger apartment in the evening. Space exists where and when it is needed. Flexibility is created within a sense of solidity and permanence.

Marie Moltrasio
In this housing scheme project I wanted to create a nice place to live, even if the density of the suburban area of Castleknock had to be increased.
I approached this project in two different ways, one was by studying the unit, which had to be a pleasant space, taking advantage of the south-view along the water bank and also of the southern sun.
The other approach was by studying an overall shape, form, which would unify the individual semi-detached two storey houses, and yet create a series of external spaces to be used by the entire new community. The main feature of the single unit is the location of the two most inhabited spaces of the home, the kitchen and the living room, on the first floor so to enjoy the advantages of a south-facing terrace, connecting to a roof garden.
Every house shares a common court with another house so they maintain a certain degree of privacy and yet be connected to each other. The overall shape was inspired by sand ripples along a shore, which allowed me to inhabit the entire site and landscape it into a sort of meadow. This enabled me to create a delicate and elegant street fa�ade, which was continuous and light weight, almost like a screen behind which everyday private life took place.
It was very important to endow each space with a private reality and yet connect every unit to the larger community. The housing is afforded this by attracting and leading people in and through the new community, while allowing each house enjoy its privacy and its own special moments, such as the southern sun and view over the water and its reflections.

Tom O'Brien
VIRTUAL LIGHT
William Gibson, megastructure, anarchy, community, density, Walter Segal
Individual self-built housing units (transient) attached to common megastructure (permanent).
Anarchy can only succeed through example. It is not the destruction of the state ; it is seeking alternatives to it. By showing people that there are alternatives to the branded lifestyle imposed on us by those in power, maybe anarchy can finally gain the respect it deserves, and be accepted as a valid ethical if not political alternative to a faltering democracy.
The only permanent part of the structure is the steel frame, which is merely to give order and structure to the complex. It ties the community together but does not impose itself on their own individuality. It acts as a subtle expandable boundary between 'us' and 'them'. It grows as our number grows just like a cultural fungus. We strap ourselves on to this structure, filling the grid with homes to suit our individual needs.
The scheme is dense ; we use space efficiently. What is the use of everybody having tiny gardens when we can put all these gardens together to make a huge communal one that is actually beneficial ?
Besides, gardens lead to walls and walls can lead to all sorts of problems.