VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York
Abstract
Contemporary housing conventions have a multitude of issues regarding availability, affordability and accessibility as tenants’ mobility, size of family unit, and financial situations change throughout life. Architects who seek to rectify these issues have been designing continuously in search of a solution that could even have utopian implications. In the Czech Republic, a strikingly new yet historically inspired prefabricated home was conceptualized by HŠH Architects, who used New Brutalist approaches to designing a home that can change as the tenants change. Their design takes inspiration from a chessboard which evokes the playfulness of the Dymaxion’s spinning-top shaped design. The Czech architects used steel, concrete and sliding removable panel doors. This allows for the structure to be altered as the family grows and changes. If a baby is born or if an elderly relative needs live-in care, the walls of the structure itself will ‘mold’ to fit their needs. This shiftable aspect of the HŠH Architects’ prototype does not expect the consumers of their design to have their entire life planned out upon the purchasing their home, as many current real estate practices requires.
Shannon King is a writer and artist. She double majored in English and Art/Art History from University of Toronto Mississauga. Holding both American and Canadian passports, she considers the general area of North-America as home after moving countless times. A lover of both the abstract and analytical, always searching for answers in both other’s and her own written work. Her academic literary interests are in ecocriticism, animal studies, the medieval period, Old English, Middle English, and Canadian studies. Photography, printmaking, pastels, graphite, digital media, and the written word are