Over the last few months I have had it set in my mind that I
would be spending the next two semesters designing a hotel casino as a part of
my thesis proposal. However, when it came down to the purpose of the design, it
hit me that what I was trying to do was not enough. I decided I wanted to take
this opportunity to study a topic that has actual relevance in the world of
architecture. I have opted to research the effects of a low-rise high-density
community within a city. After referencing a few pieces of literature on the
subject of residential issues, I found the same topics being repeated: the suburban sprawl, increase in
pollution, and the comparison of the United States’
energy consumption with other countries.
With this research I came across the concept of high-density
living as a solution. The suburban sprawl is the migration of city residents
from the urban lifestyle to the single family housing suburban lifestyle. The
issues with the suburbs have really built up. One of the big issues is the move
away from the city now requires people to drive their cars to work, wasting
money, time, and adding air pollution. The second issue is the isolation that
comes with the sprawl. The sprawl does not just reference the leaving of the
city life, the divisions of houses is a huge waste in land, and typically
requires the destruction of habitat. This aspect also affects the social lives
of people living in a suburbia, being so spread apart, requiring a lot of
travel time to anywhere they need to go, the boundary of a person’s yard
keeping people away. We need to burst the suburban bubble and bring people back
to the city.
Therefore, my proposal for the low-rise high density
residential community will aim to promote a different style of living compared
to both suburban and urban lifestyles. When people think of cities they think
skyscraper so I wanted to study the effects of low-rise in the urban setting as
an attempt to create a suburban feel. I plan to reference other countries and
their cities residential solutions because the fact is we are growing in
population and we have spread far enough. The living spaces created will be
smaller than what the U.S. resident is used to making them more efficient in
spacial aspects and environmental.
Below is my thesis proposal poster from my
Architecture Research Methods course.
The diagram to the right is meant to simply represent the
benefits of bringing a high density community into a city: bringing people back
together (density), having a shorter commute to work/not having to drive
(health/sustainability), and giving the city an income (economy).
I plan to begin my research with the comparison of the urban
life fifty years ago in the U.S. and other countries to today.
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