THE PLAN Journal (TPJ) intends to disseminate and promote innovative, thought-provoking and relevant research, studies and criticism in architecture and urbanism. The criteria for selecting contributions will be innovation, clarity of purpose and method, and potential transformational impact on disciplinary fields or the broader socio-cultural context. The ultimate purpose of the TPJ is to enrich the dialog between research and professional fields, in order to encourage both applicable new knowledge and intellectually driven modes of practice. (Maurizio Sabini)
Latest Articles
Hybrid Mass Timber + Additive Construction: Projecting an Urbanistic Building System for Social Housing
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 23 published: 2023-01-25Mass timber construction has been cultivated as an environmentally sustainable and cost effective approach for housing typology. However, repetitive and regularly shaped timber structural systems for larger scale affordable housing applications tend to be homogeneous, lacking unique and personalized spaces for both individuals and the collective, hindering the progress of more diversified and inclusive living communities. Concurrently, rapid additive (3D-printed) building construction has begun to emerge in the single-family housing market due to its benefits of mass customization, reduced onsite labor costs, and time efficiency. However, present production and building typology at a single-unit-scale are still limited for complex social housing projects. This research aims to integrate mass timber and rapid additive construction into a hybrid system. Hybrid affordable housing, through mass timber construction and additive manufacturing processes, is intended to evolve into environmentally conscious architecture as an extension of nature. It not only provides healthy and adaptable physical spaces but also supports everyday urbanism as a response to diversified personal needs and desires for a more sustainable future.
A Modular Approach to Colonia Landscapes in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 24 published: 2023-01-30The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) is a transborder region that lies in the floodplain of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo River. The region, which covers four Texas counties and the northern portion of the Mexican State of Tamaulipas, is home to more than 900 colonias on the Texas side of the border. These informal, unincorporated settlements–which house more than 400,000 people–are characterized by substandard housing and a lack of civil infrastructure including sewers, paved roads, and potable water. Many of the colonias flood regularly. This proposal imagines a modular, transitional approach to designing housing and landscape in LRGV colonias. While typical modular housing projects are standardized, prefabricated, packed, shipped, and assembled onsite; the following proposal extends modular efficiencies to the entire site, incorporating landscape, flood control, and canal systems. The holistic, modular approach allows for the flexible growth and decline of the community over the course of one hundred years. Ultimately, the transitional, modular model challenges the adversarial environmental, social, and economic arrangements that exist in colonia developments, imagining a more sympathetic relationship between people, water, and land.
At Home from Emergency Shelters to Temporary Living
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 18 published: 2023-01-24The “right to housing” is recognized as a primary right for the realization of every person, as is the “right to mobility,” understood as the right to move to improve one’s living conditions. Today, people with unstable living and working conditions due to a multiplicity of social and/or geopolitical factors are housed in precarious housing located in the city suburbs. This model replicates that used for the management of emergencies such as earthquakes and/or catastrophic weather events. Many of these shelters, despite being able to generate their own “social microcosm,” are in a state of degradation that reinforces social alienation: we could define them as “places of exclusion.” The research presented proposes to go beyond the emergency model starting from some reflections on the “right to housing” in relation to urban regeneration processes observed in some alternative European examples. The research aims to verify whether transitional housing for refugees and foreigners can be located within urban centers, and how they should be part of a broader (urban and social) regeneration project.
The Right to Housing: Architectural Composition as a Solution
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 20 published: 2023-01-25Housing is one of the main themes related to the creation of the city and plays a central role in the definition about how people live together. The development of new living strategies face many different fields of interest: urban planning, economy, social sciences, ecology, sustainability, technology. Architectural composition plays a central role in the definition of how all these matters can coexist and how it is possible to increase urban density and people’s quality of life. The analysis of Louis Sauer’s work on low-rise high-density houses outlines a solution useful for a variety of situations. Higher urban density makes it possible to increase real estate income from investments and, consequently, to increase the architectural quality of the buildings as well as the urban landscape. It gives a tangible answer to many aspects related to urban sustainability making the city more compact, reusing brownfields instead of greenfields, facilitating pedestrian cycle mobility or the use of public transport instead of private cars, and thus helping to reduce urban pollution and the use of natural resources.
Five Esthetics of the Global Development Industry: Building Low-Cost Housing in Rwanda
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 26 published: 2023-01-25This paper argued that, in parallel to financial feasibility, the esthetics play a powerful role in swaying the donation and investments away from low-cost housing projects in the development context. The paper analyzes the development industry’s structure and its players and asks how architects could ally with the End Users by understanding their self-building practices. The architect in the global development industry works with at least five clients. They are the Funders (often from the global North), the Local Government (often in the global South), the Architectural Disciplines in the funder nations, the Local Building Sector, and the End Users. Our survey of 370 self-build homes in Rwanda attests that not all actors represent their values equally, and the End Users, the actor with little resource and leverage, may be rendered silent in this process although they have the most at stake. While the global development industry tries to eradicate self-building activities, the End Users continue to claim the built environment by tapping into their social capital, and share labor, materials, and knowledge. Their architecture simultaneously protests and participates in development.
At Home with the Collective: Hilberseimer, Labor Unions, and the Women’s Movement
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 299 - 323 published: 2023-02-02While housing could be described as one of the basic forms of architecture and one of its main responsibilities, if not today’s most crucial task, architecture has largely ceased to rethink established forms of living and the politics and economies that surround it. Escaping the pervasive models of profit-based home ownership in the West seems increasingly difficult when housing is dominated by neoliberal market values. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, some architects struggled with similar conditions within the metropolis. Ludwig Hilberseimer’s proposals for new types of living for a new kind of liberated individual are particularly instructive today as they rethought housing as a right, allied with unions in order to rethink its financial models, and learned from activists in the Women’s Movement to question the dominant narratives around heteronormative family structures and domestic labor. In our time of ballooning housing costs, stagnant wages, failed trickle-down economics, and shortages of affordable housing, these urgencies have not lost but only gained momentum.
Incremental Development Manual: Toward a Cooperative Model of Housing in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia)
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 25 published: 2023-01-20The population of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, has increased by 197% in the last twenty years, resulting in the creation of sprawling districts with no basic infrastructure that house over 60% of the city’s population. Current development plans are proving ineffective as they require huge investments toward land-owner compensation and infrastructure, and rely on developers for implementation. As an alternative, we have developed a strategic framework for sustainable and affordable district upgrading for these sites as an Incremental Development Manual. The manual offers a strategy for in situ development that accommodates incremental growth and collective improvements to residents’ shared plots. It operates on a small scale, working on the mutual benefits of four households working together as the basic unit for all further transformation. This paper will demonstrate how this strategy reflects the diversity of housing needs and incomes of ger district inhabitants, and discusses potential financial tools for housing and infrastructure provision, including the potential for cooperative development.
Listening as a Methodology, Longevity as a Goal: London’s Tustin Estate Master Plan as a Case Study for Community-Led Design Development
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 24 published: 2023-01-13This essay explores the relationship between a group of design professionals, a community of residents, and a local council in the early stages of the Tustin Estate renewal project – a Master Plan and Phase One Regeneration for a south-east London post-war housing estate. In 2021, the estate’s residents voted in favor of demolishing and rebuilding its low-rise buildings in a residents’ ballot. This essay positions Tustin Estate’s engagement phase as a notable case study for community-led design, providing an overview of London’s introduction of resident ballots in estate development, leading onto the example of Tustin Estate’s ballot, which initiated its engagement strategy. Interviews with key members of the engagement process form the central research to this essay, which explores the role of ballots in estate regeneration; approaches to building authentic engagement; the importance of community ownership; and how listening enables knowledge transfer and creates a blueprint for longevity. The essay defines longevity as the culmination of design and build solutions based on principles drawn directly from residents’ needs, each of which being robust enough to avoid demolition for the long-term.
Experimenting with Mass-Housing Regeneration: Two Pioneer Actions in Bolzano (Italy) as Part of the SINFONIA Project
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 24 published: 2023-01-19The public housing sector in Italy faces a generalized crisis, which does not spare the issue of architectural and urban quality, both in the (relatively few) new buildings realized over the last three decades, and in increasingly frequent regeneration actions. The latter – the subject of this essay – generally do not go beyond conventional maintenance and are typically limited to applying essential technical solutions for energy efficiency. They miss the opportunity to update the building stock to address current housing needs. Against this backdrop, the case of SINFONIA – a five-year project financed by the European Union – represents a relevant exception. The paper presents two recent housing renovation actions developed within SINFONIA and conceived by AREA Architetti after winning two design competitions. Both actions interpret conversion in the most inventive ways, demonstrating an aptitude for a real aesthetic rethinking that changed the appearance of the buildings experimenting with two profoundly different design approaches: reinterpretation and metamorphosis. In presenting the two actions, this essay reflects on the procedure and design lessons to be learned from this experience for transfer to other situations.
Surplus Land: How Architecture Can Transform Underutilized Public Properties into Affordable Housing
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 7 published: 2023-01-13As the cost of land becomes increasingly expensive, cities are posed to establish new ways of finding sites to encourage affordable housing and housing for people experiencing homelessness. Cities in California and across the US are looking to surplus land, or underutilized publicly owned land, as a resource to develop new housing. One of the obstacles with this effort is the inconsistency of the surplus land parcels. Challenges these sites might be facing can include a lack of zoning, contamination, and a lack of connection to residential or pedestrian-friendly zones. With surplus land presenting a viable option for developing new affordable housing, Architects will be a key component to reimaging these sites to contend with the challenges they face and to integrate this new land use into neighborhood contexts.
A Right to Housing: A Compelling Idea and an Elusive Reality
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 11 published: 2023-01-10The Watershed House: A Water Harvesting Prototype for Vulnerable Communities
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 17 published: 2023-01-17A potential answer to the call for a human right to sustainable and equitable housing, water access, and environmental justice may be found in the wings of a desert beetle. This paper presents a housing prototype integrating various water harvesting strategies and biomimetic solutions derived from the Namib beetle. An exploration of issues at the intersection of water access and equitable housing is presented through a literature review that demonstrates how housing conditions, access, and affordability are linked to a lack of infrastructural services, including water, which has subsequent health implications. The paper reviews both passive and active water harvesting opportunities for architectural integration. The paper concludes with a description of the prototype through a case study addressing the housing and water access needs of colonias communities in Texas, and sheds light on water access and housing affordability challenges, proposing architectural and policy strategies to address these issues. The speculative housing prototype integrates water harvesting solutions using a prefabricated kit of parts approach allowing for flexibility and adaptability across various communities where centralized infrastructure is technically or economically not feasible.
Central State Infill: Middle Housing Solutions in Oklahoma City, USA
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 22 published: 2023-01-11The essay discusses the urban form problem in contemporary American mid-size cities, and the relationships between urban growth and residential models, in the light of ongoing demographic, economic, and environmental phenomena. Rediscussing typical urban growth models in American cities is key for the sustainable future of these communities. In a time of significant climatic transformation, traditional city models must be updated to generate renewed climate-resilient urban forms. That means reducing waste heat and greenhouse gas emissions through compact neighborhoods that integrate energy efficiency with transit and walkability. The first part of the essay introduces the topic of urban growth in the United States. Ongoing urbanization is considered in relationship to emerging climate phenomena, change in demographics, and housing market trends. The second part discusses the current planning debate in Oklahoma City (OKC), one of the largest and most populated cities in Central United States. In addition, the essay presents a selection of recent infill housing developments for OKC’s urban core, discussing how they are contributing to the debate on sustainable urban growth in the city.
The Right to Housing: A Holistic Perspective. From Concept to Advocacy, Policy, and Practice
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 2 [The Right to Housing], Pages: 1 - 18 published: 2023-01-10Featured Articles
Human Time as a Resource: Twelve Strategies for Re-thinking Urban Materiality
VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 2 [The Good Material], Pages: 305 - 322 published: 2021-11-30Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age: A Conversation
VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 28 published: 2021-05-14We received and we gladly publish this conversation among distinguished theorists and scholars on an important topic, also aligned with the cross-disciplinary mission of our journal. [MS]
ABSTRACT - The article offers a multi-author conversation charting the future of architecture in light of the apparent tension between Baukultur, which combines the culture of building and the building of this culture, and the rapid changes brought about by digital technology, embracing cybernetics and artificial intelligence. The article builds on a discussion of Baukultur to debate in what sense buildings are “machines for living in,” then examines neuromorphic architecture wherein cybernetic mechanisms help buildings sense the needs of their occupants. It closes with an example of a building complex, Kampung Admiralty, that combines cybernetic opportunities with a pioneering approach to building “community and biophilia” into our cities. This article interleaves an abridged version of Michael Arbib’s (2019) article “Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age,” 1 with extensive comments by the co-authors.
Gender Matters. The Grand Architectural Revolution
VOLUME 4/2019 - Issue 2 [GENDER MATTERS], Pages: 273 - 279 published: 2020-02-07Japanese Architecture Returns to Nature: Sou Fujimoto in Context
VOLUME 7/2022 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 36 published: 2022-05-16We received and we gladly publish a contribution by distinguished author Prof. Botond Bognar. [MS]
ABSTRACT - The essay introduces the development of Sou Fujimoto’s architecture as it has been influenced by various sources and experiences leading to his recently completed and highly recognized major project, the House of Hungarian Music in Budapest. Among these influences the contemporary economic and political conditions in Japan and beyond, as well as the nature-inspired work of prominent Japanese designers are discussed. Touching upon the seminal work by Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito, the essay also highlights the contrasts and occasional similarities between the so-called “White School” and “Red School” in contemporary Japanese architecture, in referencing nature as the primary source of their designs. Today, these “schools” are best represented, respectively, by the activities of SANAA and Kengo Kuma. Although Fujimoto’s architecture is clearly derivative and part of the radically minimalist White School, the House of Hungarian Music reveals an intimacy and richness
in articulating its relationship to the surrounding natural environment, which quality, if perhaps momentarily, points beyond the minimalism of the “Whites.”