THE RESOLUTION

In response to today's housing affordability crisis, Stack and Scaffold, a model for modular housing, utilises prefabricated modules and a permanent, skeletal superstructure as a method of forming a development that adapts to its users and grows over time to the density of the site.

It creates an affordance of flexibility and adaptability that allows growth and change over a single family’s occupation as well as long term development. As the project is situated in the middle ring suburb of Brunswick West, the model supports affordability for homeowners and renters alike, through the addition and subtraction of unit modules, that supports changes to households while encouraging sustainability through recycling and refurbishment of modules across the site.

Its mass production process further facilitates affordability. By developing a permanent superstructure in which modules can be slotted in, and removed, the creation of micro-communities becomes more adaptable and allows for a flexible arrangement of communal spaces on the ground plane, and enhances programme and community within the core of each residence. The configuration of dwellings creates different typologies that facilitate different lifestyles: singles, young couples, families, co-living and share-houses alike. Each micro-community is linked in a connected system of green overpasses that allow residences to travel between micro-community cores above the public open plaza.

The micro-community is illustrated as a kit of parts that forms the basis of the impermanent structure that populates the permanent skeletal superstructure. The kit of parts allows for customisation in a prefabricated system that facilitates growth and change to dwelling configuration and size, responding to the budget and development of occupant lifestyles and households. The superstructure informs the ground plane in creating communal amenities including a communal laundry, storage cage, bicycle rack and barbeque area in the courtyard above, facilitating an engagement with the community, while reducing utility spaces within private residences. 

Where the structure grows, unoccupied space is temporarily appropriated to include green spaces in a temporary kit of parts which facilitates community engagement and biophilic design principles through the integration of greenery and semi-public spaces. 

Represented in the plan is the different programmes divided on each level. Shown are the ground, first and second level. The ground level focuses on communal facilities, like the communal laundry, bike rack and storage as well as amenities that are unique to the micro-community such as a restaurant, convenience store or gym that is shared by the site. On the first level is the entry sequence to the dwellings through the stair core and lift as well as communal, sheltered outdoor space in the form of a void deck courtyard hybrid which has a barbeque area. Above is a typical level, shown as the second level, where dwellings are configured to the users’ liking. 

This kit of parts is also illustrated in the plan, showing how configurations of dwellings can be customised and adapted to budget and needs with different typologies being formulated from the range of 3 sizes included within types of module pods.

The studio foci highlighted within this project relate to collaborative housing through user participation in the arrangement of modules as well as spatial adaptability that is facilitated through module units and scaffolded circulation routes. The individual and collective are mitigated through the overlap and transitional spaces created within each core that facilitate social value and interrogate community and how to live closer together. 

The experiential shots were chosen to highlight the sequence of entering the site, travelling through it, and experiencing the micro-community.

A key focus highlighted in the large experiential is the difference between internal and external facades. While the internal is prescribed as a designed structure that focuses on affordances for user interaction within the communal circulatory space, the external follows a logic of indeterminacy, having periods of growth and change as the modules are added and reconfigured.